Kirk Cousins does not cheat on his wife

February 4, 2016 6:29 PM

It began as a strange post on the Redskins's subreddit outlining the secret to quarterback Kirk Cousins's talent: faithfulness to his wife, Julie. This has spun off into an entire community celebrating the couple, which is currently excited about a touching moment from Kirk's AMA today.

/r/KirkCousins now counts Kirk himself as a member. Sort by top to see the most popular posts. I was particularly moved by this comment.

posted by The Devil Tesla (32 comments total)

I am never, ever going to understand reddit, am I?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:40 PM on February 4, 2016 [28 favorites]

This is the only thing about Kirk Cousins that I care about. And that happened before he was married!
posted by miguelcervantes at 6:43 PM on February 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Just when I was smiling knowingly at the Guardian Furry post, commenting with confidence about puppy play and pony girls, Metafilter reminds me that I will never come close to knowing the true beauty and complexity of the universe/humanity/the internet.
posted by kittensofthenight at 6:51 PM on February 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

got dang kids today.
posted by boo_radley at 7:07 PM on February 4, 2016

what is the. what.
posted by Glinn at 7:10 PM on February 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am never, ever going to understand reddit, am I?

I suppose that explaining the joke also ruins it, but I think /r/KirkCousins/ is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Saying "Kirk Cousins does not cheat on his wife" is very much a don't think of an elephant kind of thing. It immediately makes you think Kirk Cousins is cheating on his wife. I have no clue if he's cheating on his wife, but it's a funny thought, considering that everything we know about Kirk makes him sound obnoxiously upstanding. That he works for such a scummy team in a scummy league just increases the contrast further.

The NFL is not a simple thing right now, so there is something massively appealing to this hyperbole. Instead of worrying about stadiums in LA or domestic violence there is something comfortable about stuff like this:

RULES FOR /R/KIRKCOUSINS:

• Score Touchdowns
• Be A Role Model
• Never Cheat On Wife

posted by The Devil Tesla at 7:11 PM on February 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

And he's playing along because he's in on the joke or because he's not in on the joke?

I am so out of touch.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:14 PM on February 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not on his wife, no.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:29 PM on February 4, 2016

And he's playing along because he's in on the joke or because he's not in on the joke?

Does it matter?
posted by The Devil Tesla at 7:31 PM on February 4, 2016

He's still more genuine than Russell Wilson
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:33 PM on February 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Really what's so hard to understand about a quasi ironic tribute to a romance that will be remembered for the ages?
posted by Tevin at 7:39 PM on February 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, but does his wife cheat on Kirk Cousins?
posted by AugustWest at 7:47 PM on February 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Does it matter?

Does to his wife presumably.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:48 PM on February 4, 2016

Does to his wife presumably.

She's the one who found it first, by the way.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 7:50 PM on February 4, 2016

Whoa - that pretty much guarantees that she searched for "Kirk Cousins cheat on wife". Does she suspect something?
posted by vorpal bunny at 7:57 PM on February 4, 2016

Someone could have sent it to her or told her about it.
posted by sockermom at 8:00 PM on February 4, 2016

Not possible!
posted by vorpal bunny at 8:07 PM on February 4, 2016

Here is this seemingly decent fellow with supreme athletic talents and intelligence. Obviously because this is America we must make him play under a racist banner dressed in red face. Then we will watch as other bludgeon his brain and body until one or both is wrecked.
posted by humanfont at 8:10 PM on February 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Here is this seemingly decent fellow with supreme athletic talents and intelligence. Obviously because this is America we must make him play under a racist banner dressed in red face. Then we will watch as other bludgeon his brain and body until one or both is wrecked.

We will also hyperbolically pit him against his predecessor, strongly hinting at how happy we are that a great white hope has returned to Washington again to replace That Big-Headed broken-body (black) QB that we urge the team to take out like garbage.
posted by sallybrown at 8:57 PM on February 4, 2016

No. The best NFL life-romance is Bianca and Vince Wilfork.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:18 PM on February 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

He's still more genuine than Russell Wilson

I dunno man, we're talking about a guy who wrote a book with a chapter entitled, "The NFL Draft: Trusting God Has a Plan." That makes me at least as uncomfortable as Wilson's creepy religiosity.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:37 PM on February 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure Kurt Warner made a deal with the devil when he was bagging groceries, which is why he became Born Again just as his career blossomed and then why his career subsequently foundered, then bounced back at the end, based on God given (and by then re-redeemed), talent.
posted by notyou at 10:30 PM on February 4, 2016

The team name is racist. I don't find anything associated with this organization cute.

Also, Cousins is a fraud of a QB and I will laugh and laugh if they sign him long term.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:31 PM on February 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Toothsome strange.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:52 AM on February 5, 2016

I've never heard of Kirk Cousins but I'm impressed to hear he is so good at both football and marriage. They are each famously difficult and I am terrible at both myself.
posted by foobaz at 3:52 AM on February 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

which is why he became Born Again just as his career blossomed and then why his career subsequently foundered, then bounced back at the end, based on God given (and by then re-redeemed), talent.

Wasn't it because he got switched to an awful coach who wanted him to wait longer for the plays to develop which led to him getting beaten to a pulp?
posted by drezdn at 4:51 AM on February 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sometimes we make individuals into heroes and create these moments of worship around them because they've done something courageous or excellent in single stressful moments, like Sully landing that plane on the Hudson, or because they've done something arduous and extraordinary like rowing across an ocean. We celebrate that they rose magnificently to an occasion. But we also have an urge to celebrate everyday virtue, to include the solid dude in our pantheon. We seek role models with discipline, habit, hygiene, all the little decisions that together produce one big picture of a more ethical and admirable life. We've lost Mr. Rogers, who exemplified this ideal to US-raised people of my generation, including those who had lost faith entirely in religion. I just watched Twin Peaks and was delighted by how many characters share a fundamental core of integrity, compassion, and work ethic. I drank in every moment of Agent Cooper's consistent lovingkindness. I suspect a similar appeal is operating in the /r/KirkCousins fandom, as isrly_eder's comment on the value of the subreddit demonstrates:

I first came to this sub thinking that it was a joke. Which it sort of was. But everyone is in on the joke. And in a whole world of negativity, this place is a beacon of calm and all around good feelings. Faithfulness. Charity. Family values. Touchdowns.

In particular I think it's interesting to note how Cousins's virtue is explicitly contrasted with the iniquity of the NFL as a whole and with the NFL as an inherently corrupting force. In the only-partially-ironic devotion to Cousins I see an anti-institutional bent emphasizing private, personal virtue as a barricade against untrustable institutions. David Simon once said about The Wire:

It's very loosely based on the experiences of my co-writer, Ed Burns, who was a 20-year veteran of the police department here in Baltimore. He did a lot of these protracted investigations, often of more than a year's time, into violent drug traffickers. It was largely based on his experiences and his frustrations in the department. And then it was also based on my experiences at my newspaper, which became a sort of hellish, futile bureaucracy. And then while we were writing the scripts, Enron was happening. And the Catholic Church. It became more of a treatise about institutions and individuals than a straight cop show. ...

We knew exactly what we wanted to say about the bureaucratic aspects of the drug war. It is about what happens in this land of ours when product ceases to matter, when the institutions themselves become predominant over their purpose. Pick up the paper: You take a job, you go down to Houston, you move your family there, you find out they gutted the company and stole your pension. It's like whatever you believe in, whatever you commit to that's larger than you or your family, will somehow find a way to fuck you.

How do we protect ourselves against that insidious power, which thinks nothing of turning us into amoral cogs and pawns? One enticing answer is: set up unbreakable walls between you and specific unpardonable sins. Turn those barriers into laws of nature, immovable objects that withstand anything. And Kirk Cousins is a professional athlete; we're already primed to praise him for his dedicated willpower.

I'm grateful, The Devil Tesla, to see this jewel encapsulating a fascinating trend in admiresmanship. Thanks.
posted by brainwane at 6:06 AM on February 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Knowing that his wife's name is Julie...I keep seeing puppy dog-like Matt Saracen stuttering "Uh, Julie...um, uh..." in the way that he did on the show. Cousins and Saracen are probably not alike at all, but somewhere in my head they are connected. Texas forever!
posted by tehjoel at 6:23 AM on February 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wasn't it because he got switched to an awful coach who wanted him to wait longer for the plays to develop which led to him getting beaten to a pulp?

Indeed. The coach was the vessel through which the Prince of Lies animated his dark purpose.
posted by notyou at 6:49 AM on February 5, 2016

i think it would be lovely if we as a community could be better people than dan snyder (a low bar to be sure) and not use his team's racist name when discussing them. "washington's (football) team" is understood by pretty much everyone.
posted by nadawi at 7:26 AM on February 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

i think it would be lovely if we as a community could be better people than dan snyder (a low bar to be sure) and not use his team's racist name when discussing them. "washington's (football) team" is understood by pretty much everyone.

I considered calling them the Washington Racists, but decided against it because this is a post about the beauty of Kirk and Julie's relationship, not the many sins of the NFL.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 7:54 AM on February 5, 2016

but if you had just said "washington's team" then we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. by putting their name in the post, it makes it one of the topics of the post, whether you meant for that to happen or not. i'm just saying, maybe in the future, we as a community could choose differently.
posted by nadawi at 8:24 AM on February 5, 2016 [2 favorites]