'You Like That' more than playful rallying cry for Kirk Cousins
PHILADELPHIA – He wasn't the all-time bet in 2012. He wasn't the one the Washington Redskins dropped the mortgage on, wagered the savings, risked the college fund and the marriage. In a league historically littered with all-in, franchise-savior quarterbacks, Kirk Cousins was always billed as something less: A hedge, an argument, a long-odds backup plan.
Until now. Until Saturday. Until he became the winning ticket – for himself and the franchise he leads.
Kirk Cousins paid off. The Washington Redskins are in the postseason after Saturday's win against the Philadelphia Eagles, and at the age of 27, Cousins is headed toward an offseason in which his franchise will sign him to a new contract that will measure tens of millions in guaranteed money. Once a captive caretaker expected to do little more than bridge the injury pauses between Robert Griffin III's glories, Cousins has survived. He outlasted Griffin's two-year cratering. He outgrew his own shortcomings. And finally, he helped the Redskins outperform a pitiful NFC East.
As Cousins walked through a corridor Saturday night, departing his news conference, he loudly and pointedly asked a Redskins staffer, "How many of them picked us to win the division?" The "them" Cousins referred to was a flock of media members, many of whom had eagerly asked him about his rise as a starter and how far the streaking Redskins could go. But Cousins' words were more of a rhetorical remark than anything. And the moment was defiant, an underappreciated quarterback looking for someone to tell him, "Nobody, Kirk. Nobody picked this team to win the NFC East. Nobody picked you."
This was a more understated version of his galvanizing "YOU LIKE THAT!" moment earlier in the season. But for good measure, Cousins repeated that line, too. First in a chant with a throng of Redskins fans who made the always-dicey trek into Philadelphia for the division clincher. Then Cousins screamed it again at team president Bruce Allen as he walked into the locker room. Allen responded by throwing an arm around his quarterback for a celebratory embrace, then shoved him in the chest the way a proud brother affectionately pushes his sibling.
There's something telling about that whole phrase. It's more than a T-shirt for Cousins. It's more than a rallying cry. Indeed, it's very much a quarterback demanding to be appreciated, demanding to be respected. In the past, when Griffin was still the centerpiece of the franchise, anything Cousins did was considered ancillary. His pluses were an appetizer for a future trade or the extra frosting of having a talented backup. And that lingered, even into this season's training camp, when the divide between team owner Dan Snyder's loyalties to Griffin and head coach Jay Gruden's designs for Cousins were still being sorted out.
It was Griffin who lined up fans who continued to protest that he could do no wrong, that RG3 had to be who he was and ball out. When national media visited, Griffin was the man pursued. Meanwhile, Cousins and Gruden bided their time. If Griffin didn't work out, the plan was in place for the coach to seize the situation and install the player who had seemed most aligned with his coaching expectations since the day he arrived. And in what seemed inevitable, Griffin never got going in the preseason, leaving the door open for what Gruden wanted: A chance to insert Cousins and declare him as the starter for the entire 2015 season.
This was Cousins' shot. And after a 2-4 start composed of up-and-down performances, he brought the Redskins back in a thrilling 31-30 win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Oct. 25. This was the corner, and unbeknownst to most looking at Washington, Cousins had turned it. Counting that day, Cousins is 6-3. He's scored a total of 24 touchdowns in that span and thrown only three interceptions, and had six passing performances over 300 yards.
The win on Saturday served as a prime example of what can be. When the line is protecting Cousins, when he is given time to throw, he is finding mismatches. He is firing accurately downfield. He is making smart decisions. And he's racking up pinball stats against bad teams and defenses. That is fine because ascending from capable starter to even a modest star at that position requires showing an ability to beat bad defenses. Cousins is doing that. When healthy, pieces like tight end Jordan Reed and wideouts DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon and Jamison Crowder have been effective in all three levels of the passing tree.
This is the kind of development envisioned by Gruden, who fought for Cousins' right to lead the team and believed that with each opportunity to fail or succeed, he would pay back such faith. And when one of those failures came at the end of the half against the Eagles – with Cousins incomprehensibly kneeling away a field-goal opportunity rather than spiking the ball and stopping the clock – Gruden did little more than shrug at the mistake.
"We had a debacle at the end of the half and a normal guy could have been in the tank there," Gruden said. "But he just came in [to the locker room] and kept his composure, just kept his nose to the grindstone and kept battling and competing and doing what he's supposed to do. He's a class act and I'm happy for Kirk and what he's accomplished."
But Gruden knows there is more to do. Cousins knows. The roster knows. They've been here before, entering the playoffs and feeling like they've got the quarterback who can make all the difference in the coming years. Certainly, Washington will pay Cousins this offseason as if that is the case. But the last time that happened, everything came apart in two long, excruciating years. But Cousins also has unique perspective. He lived it. He was part of it. He learned from it. And maybe that's enough to make this different.
"[This is] very satisfying," Cousins said. "This is the most satisfied I've been as a football player. It's a big accomplishment. Now the key is to build from here. … This is our first year. I feel like our offense has grown as the year has gone on. We've kind of figured things out as we went. I keep saying it, 'People forget I was named the starter a week before the season.' It wasn't like we had the chance to build this offense around me back in April."
No, Cousins didn't get that opportunity. It went to the more acclaimed, more heavily wagered upon teammate. But maybe not being that guy, the one tied forever to a sink-or-fly draft gamble, is worth something, too. Maybe it afforded Cousins time to see everything that was wrong with his team and his locker room and his own game, but not be constantly held accountable for those cracks. Maybe it gives time to figure some things out.
At the very least, Cousins has shown being billed as something less and delivering as something more can pay far more than imagined. For the Redskins and their quarterback, that's the story of this season.
