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01Dec

My one-on-one interview with Kirk Cousins

Kirk Cousins

Life is good for Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins. Not only has he solidified himself as a legitimate franchise quarterback, ensuring a handsome payday isn’t too far down the road, but today he was also named the NFC Offensive Player of the Month for November.

In three games in the month of November, Cousins completed 84 of 116 passes (72.4 percent) for 1,086 yards with eight touchdowns and no interceptions for a passer rating of 124.4. His 362.0 passing yards per game led all NFL quarterbacks in the month of November.

While Cousins has been fantastic for more than a year now, his rise from unheralded backup to face of the franchise has still caught more than a few people off guard. How did this happen? Can anyone outside of the Cousins family truthfully say they saw this meteoric rise coming? And how much do Redskins fans truly know about the 28-year-old?

In hopes of helping answer that last question, I went back and dug up an in-depth feature story I wrote for Redskins.com during Cousins’ rookie year, back in late 2012 when he was firmly intrenched as Washington’s backup behind some other rookie phenom.

During our 30-minute one-on-one interview, Cousins was incredibly candid and honest — going as far as to say the Washington Redskins were the last team in the entire NFL he thought would consider drafting him. Without further adieu, here is the best feature story I ever wrote for Redskins.com:

Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins rolls out of the pocket and delivers a pass to receiver Pierre Garcon, who was wide open in the corner of the end zone.

Fans of the Washington Redskins got to see what rookie quarterback Kirk Cousins was all about when he was forced to fill in for an injured Robert Griffin III in the final two minutes of a tense December game against the Baltimore Ravens.

The 24-year-old was thrust into action with his team trailing by eight points and the game on the line after Griffin suffered a knee injury on a hit by Ravens defensive lineman Haloti Ngata, and Cousins promptly led the Redskins to a thrilling come-from-behind overtime victory.

Cousins’ clutch performance enabled the Redskins to keep their playoff hopes alive and ultimately helped pave the way to Washington’s first NFC East title since 1999 – which is funny, because the Barrington, Illinois native hadn’t even started playing tackle football yet the last time the burgundy and gold reigned supreme in the division.

That’s because Cousins didn’t begin playing tackle football until the following year when, as a sixth grader, he finally convinced his parents to let him give it a shot.

“Out in the suburbs where we lived in Chicago, Walter Payton and Mike Singletary lived in that area and both had decided they wouldn’t let their kids play tackle football until they were older,” Cousins said. “They had both played football for so long, gotten beaten up so much and knew the pounding that you take as a football player and felt like you could still learn the rules of the game playing flag football or playing in the backyard. So when guys who played in the NFL and are Hall of Famers are encouraging my dad to not push it too early, my dad listened.”

While his playing days might have started a little bit later in life than other kids, it didn’t take Cousins long to catch up.

“I was never the best athlete,” he said. “I was always a good athlete, but I was never the fastest, the biggest or the strongest. But like my dad always told me, I just have a knack for throwing a football. There’s just something about the nature of throwing a football that came very natural to me. I never really had to work on it and no one has ever told me to change or fix my throwing motion. People just say the way I do it is a good way to do it.”

When he was 13, Cousins’ family moved to Michigan and immediately began searching for a high school with a top-notch football program. Well, things don’t always go as planned and Cousins ended up at Holland Christian School, which wasn’t exactly a dynasty in waiting.

“We were looking for a school system with a good football program because that’s what I knew I wanted to do,” Cousins said. “The school I ended up at though had just started football. As a result, it was still in the early stages and we weren’t very good, the coaching staff wasn’t very experienced and we had to kind of learn on the fly. I had a great experience, but I didn’t really have that powerhouse football experience that a lot of the guys in the NFL probably had.”

Making matters worse, Cousins suffered an injury in his very first game of varsity football during his junior year.

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15Jan

kirk cousins still has something to prove

(photo by Brian Murphy)

For my money, Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins has one of the toughest gigs imaginable.

For starters, his lifelong dream of playing professional football doesn’t exactly go according to plan when he get drafted by a quarterback-starved franchise that was still celebrating landing Robert Griffin III.

So while so many of his peers in this talented rookie class are setting records, he spent much of his inaugural campaign sitting next to Rex Grossman on the sidelines while the most electrifying player in the NFL today took the league by storm.

When Griffin got injured and Cousins finally had the opportunity to show he too could be effective at this level, the entire offense had to be switched up because his skill set is so vastly different from RGIII’s. Just when his teammates began to settle in and get used to running the pistol, everything reverts back to a more traditional offense run by a far less mobile rookie.

And yet, you never hear Cousins complain or feel sorry for himself. You don’t hear his agent making remarks about demanding to be traded or anything like that. Instead, the 24-year-old just quietly goes about his business and handles himself with absolute class and professionalism.

Sure, he wants to play, but he knows this is Griffin’s team, so for as long as he’s in Washington he’s going to be the best teammate and backup quarterback he can be.

Before the season ended, I had the chance to sit down with Cousins for a one-on-one interview with the Michigan State standout to learn more about the young man who might very well be the starting quarterback for the Redskins when the 2013 season begins. Here’s how our conversation went:

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03Jan

kirk cousins’ path prepared him for NFL success

(photo by Brian Murphy)

[Editor’s note: This season, the Washington Redskins have asked me to occasionally write feature stories for the team’s official website, Redskins.com. This article is my latest contribution, so please check it out.]

Fans of the Washington Redskins got to see what rookie quarterback Kirk Cousins was all about when he was forced to fill in for an injured Robert Griffin III in the final two minutes of a December game against the Baltimore Ravens.

The 24-year-old was thrust into action with his team trailing by eight points and the game on the line after Griffin suffered a knee injury on a hit by Ravens defensive lineman Haloti Ngata, and he promptly led the Redskins to a thrilling come-from-behind overtime victory.

Cousins’ clutch performance enabled the Redskins to keep their playoff hopes alive and ultimately helped pave the way to Washington’s first NFC East title since 1999 – which is funny, because the Barrington, Illinois native hadn’t even started playing tackle football yet the last time the burgundy and gold reigned supreme in the division.

Cousins didn’t begin playing tackle football until the following year when, as a sixth grader, he finally convinced his parents to let him give it a shot.

“Out in the suburbs where we lived in Chicago, Walter Payton and Mike Singletary lived in that area and both had decided they wouldn’t let their kids play tackle football until they were older,” Cousins said. “They had both played football for so long, gotten beaten up so much and knew the pounding that you take as a football player and felt like you could still learn the rules of the game playing flag football or playing in the backyard. So when guys who played in the NFL and are Hall of Famers are encouraging my dad to not push it too early, my dad listened.”

While his playing days might have started a little bit later in life than other kids, it didn’t take Cousins long to catch up.

“I was never the best athlete,” he said. “I was always a good athlete, but I was never the fastest, the biggest or the strongest. But like my dad always told me, I just have a knack for throwing a football. There’s just something about the nature of throwing a football that came very natural to me. I never really had to work on it and no one has ever told me to change or fix my throwing motion. People just say the way I do it is a good way to do it.”

When he was 13, Cousins’ family moved to Michigan and immediately began searching for a high school with a top-notch football program. Well, things don’t always go as planned and Cousins ended up at Holland Christian School, which wasn’t exactly a dynasty in waiting.

“We were looking for a school system with a good football program because that’s what I knew I wanted to do,” Cousins said. “The school I ended up at though had just started football. As a result, it was still in the early stages and we weren’t very good, the coaching staff wasn’t very experienced and we had to kind of learn on the fly. I had a great experience, but I didn’t really have that powerhouse football experience that a lot of the guys in the NFL probably had.”

Making matters worse, Cousins suffered an injury in his very first game of varsity football during his junior year.

“You dream of playing varsity football,” he said. “With no guaranteed scholarships and in my first game on varsity, I get hit and break my ankle. I had to sit out the rest of the season and it really set me back and hurt me with recruiting.”

By the nature of the position, quarterbacks are going to get hit. They’re going to be knocked down. The good ones get back up and find a way to overcome adversity. Even at an early age, Cousins proved this was one of his biggest strengths.

Click here for the full article.

19Dec

trent williams: “i want to be dominant”

(photo by Brian Murphy)

[Editor’s note: This season, the Washington Redskins have asked me to occasionally write feature stories for the team’s official website, Redskins.com. This article is my latest contribution, so please check it out.]

For as long as he can remember, there was only one thing Washington Redskins left tackle Trent Williams wanted to do with his life.

“Football is a huge deal down in Texas and I always knew it was what I wanted to do,” he said.

Of course, anyone who has ever spent any length of time in Longview, Texas knows that they take their football very seriously.

“Football is like a religion down there,” Williams said with a laugh. “The turnout for our high school games looked like what you’d see other places for college games. People take a lot of pride in their football there. We’d have at least 5,000 or 6,000 people at our games, easy.”

Because Williams was so in love with the game, he wanted to begin playing as quickly as possible. Usually, children had to wait until they were in the third grade to begin playing football in Longview, but because Williams was bigger than most kids his age, he was able to start a year earlier.

He might have been the youngest kid out there, but he was big, strong and had plenty of speed for a kid that size, so it made perfect sense that his first football coach wanted to build an offense around Williams as a running back. There was just one problem …

“I wasn’t very good,” he admitted. “I had a little bit of speed to me, so I could get away from people. But I couldn’t hold onto the ball. I definitely had some ball security issues, so I guess running back wasn’t my calling.”

Fortunately for Williams, there are plenty of positions on a football team that don’t require a player to handle the ball. His coaches moved him to linebacker and Williams did a much better job once carrying the football was no longer involved.

Through middle school he was still relatively close in height and weight to the other kids he was playing against, but by high school, Williams hit a growth spurt most kids can only dream of. By the time he got to ninth grade, Williams stood an imposing 6-foot-3 and 270 lbs. and there simply aren’t many possible positions for a kid that big to play.

So Williams, for better of for worse, was an offensive lineman. For some though, that can take a little bit of an adjustment because there’s nothing glamorous about life in the trenches. An offensive lineman can lock down a defensive end for 50 straight plays, but one mistake and that’s all anyone wants to talk about.

“We don’t play a glorified position,” Williams said. “I mean, we get a little more notice nowadays, but no one wants to be the guy who has to stay back and block. It was always the most dreadful position on the team because no one wanted to play on the O-line. And honestly, people really can’t tell if you’re a good offensive or defensive lineman until much later in high school or even college. But a lot of people still give out scholarships on sheer potential.”

Although he hadn’t played the position for very long, Williams still showed enough potential to entice his fair share of big-name college programs.

“I was pretty raw, but I was athletic,” he said. “And I had a mean streak that caught a lot of college recruiters’ eyes. I always wanted to finish my blocks and I was always getting out and blocking guys in space — taking on linebackers and defensive backs and showing that I had the athletic ability to keep up with most everyone out there on the field. I admit it though, I was very raw. I didn’t have much technique, but I was coached well by my high school coaches.”

When it became time to choose a college, Williams had plenty of options (and scholarships) to choose from. But because several other players from East Texas, including Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson and former Redskins receiver Malcolm Kelly were already at the University of Oklahoma, and because of a lack of depth on the offensive line, Williams felt the Sooners were the best fit.

During his first two years at Oklahoma, Williams made six starts each season at right tackle. During his junior year, Williams started all 14 games (playing both left and right tackle) on one of the premiere offensive lines in the country — a unit that surrendered just 11 sacks all season long. During his senior season, Williams was named an All-American and was easily considered one of the best left tackles in the country.

And yet, none of that immediately comes to mind when the 24-year-old thinks back to his college career.

Click here for the full article.

12Dec

darrel young: we’re all brothers working together

(photo by Brian Murphy)

[Editor’s note: This season, the Washington Redskins have asked my brother, Joel Murphy, and I to occasionally write feature stories for the team’s official website, Redskins.com. This article, which was written by Joel, is our latest contribution, so please check it out.]

Like most Americans, the holidays are a special time for Washington Redskins fullback Darrel Young.

Growing up with his parents and his older brother David, Young remembers staying up until 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve to try to sneak a peek at his mom wrapping presents, then getting up at 3:30 a.m. and trying to wake the rest of his family so he could start unwrapping them as early as possible.

Family is very important to Young and, looking back, he realizes how special those Christmases together with the rest of his family truly were.

“I had a father and a mother and a home. They’ve been married for 30-plus years. Any time you have parents like that, they set a foundation,” he said.

Young remembers his house always being immaculately decorated. From the tree – which the 25-year-old insists has to be real – to the lights and ornaments, the Young household was filled with festive decorations. And it still is to this day.

“My dad does so much, I swear sometimes it looks like a Macy’s tree,” Young said. “Just the lights, the ornaments, he does the whole nine yards. My yard’s always lit up. We have reindeer. Every tree is decorated. The walkway is decorated with lights. The light bill is ridiculous for the month of December.”

Young still remembers the best gift he ever got on Christmas – a Mongoose bike that he had wanted for months. He was eight years old. To his delight, he found the bicycle waiting for him under the Christmas tree.

“I wanted this Mongoose bike,” Young said. “It was a chrome bike. I wanted it so much that I never rode it because I didn’t want anyone to beat me up and take it. I kept it in my room. I never rode it. I wiped it down every day. I was obsessed with this bike.”

To Young’s relief, the bike was never stolen. Sadly though, it also was never used.

“It’s still in my garage to this day. My dad and I cleaned out the garage when I was home during the bye week and we started laughing because I still haven’t ridden that bike,” he said.

Of course, Christmas isn’t all about the presents. At its root, the holiday is a special time to spend with the ones you love.

“My parents weren’t millionaires, but they were rich with love,” Young said.

The third-year pro remembers his house always being filled with holiday music. He remembers relatives playing dominoes and Spades and other card games. And he remembers his dad and his brother in the kitchen making delicious holiday fare.

“My dad will cook. He’s the chef. I’ll just eat until my stomach pops,” the fullback said.

On Thanksgiving, his father makes fried turkey, ham, stuffing, yams, macaroni and cheese, baked ziti, collard greens, sweet potato pie and cranberry sauce. Christmas is just as lavish a spread. But Young’s father’s true specialty is his barbecue sauce, which shines during Fourth of July barbecues.

“My dad has this barbecue sauce that’s amazing. If you don’t like it it’s because you’re different,” Young said. “I’m seriously thinking about marketing it. Every player that’s had it has loved it. Every person that’s had it has loved it. I have a big Fourth of July barbecue every year. People come there just for the sauce.”

When asked what’s in the sauce that makes it so special, Young couldn’t say. That’s because the recipe is a closely-guarded secret.

“He’ll take it to the grave,” Young said. “He won’t tell me what he puts in it.”

Of course, as the years go by and Young has gotten older, the meaning of holidays has changed for him. The presents and food become less important and it’s the time with family that starts to matter most.

“I understand family values more. Just being a little bit older, being on my own, I still love the fact that my family wants to be with me on Christmas and I want to be with them,” Young said.

He also enjoys a chance to give back to the two people who gave him so much growing up.

Click here for the full article.

06Dec

joshua morgan channels tragedy into giving back

(photo by Brian Murphy)

[Editor’s note: This season, the Washington Redskins have asked me to occasionally write feature stories for the team’s official website, Redskins.com. This article is my latest contribution, so please check it out.]

The mind of a child is a beautiful thing. An oversized cardboard box or a couple cushions from a sofa provide ample opportunity for a week’s worth of entertainment. In most cases, if someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up and you don’t know, you’ve got all the time in the world to figure it out.

Unfortunately though, that isn’t the case for everyone.

Take, for example, Washington Redskins receiver Joshua Morgan, who was forced to grow up much faster than he probably should have had to because of the tough Southeast D.C., neighborhood his family lived in.

If it was up to Morgan, he would have spent every waking moment of his childhood playing basketball, going to school and hanging out with friends.

“Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun as a child and I was a straight A student, but growing up where I did in D.C. was just a rough situation,” he said. “I was forced to experience things like death sooner than you would have liked. Like having to go to my friend’s funeral when I was 12 or the fact that I lost three or four of my friends to gun violence before I even got to ninth grade. That stuff makes you grow up fast.”

How was Morgan able to avoid the same pitfalls and mistakes that too many of his neighborhood friends could not?

“Sports and my grandmother,” Morgan said. “My grandmother was the type of person who was always involved and always in my ear. We were in church every day of the week and she kept me out of trouble. Honestly, I had a lot of people  who saw something in me even before I did and they worked hard to keep me out of that element. I had so many people looking out for me and I tried to learn from other people’s mistakes.

“I had such a strong inner circle around me — starting with my grandmother, who was my main prayer warrior — and everyone had a hand in helping me out,” he continued. “Even the ones who were out there hustling on the corners in my neighborhood would tell me, ‘Man, you’re going to be the one to make it out of here. We’re going to keep you out of this and we’re going to keep you out of that. You don’t need to be out here doing none of this. Stay on that basketball court and you’re gonna get out of here. Just watch.’ I was blessed to have so many people in my circle.”

Anyone who saw him play back in the day had to admit that Morgan was talented on the basketball court. He was a slasher who thrived with the ball in his hands, in the mold of Miami shooting guard Dwyane Wade, and the 27-year-old readily admits he was convinced he’d be the next Michael Jordan — until he stopped growing at 6-foot-1.

“I could take a game over whenever I needed to,” Morgan said. “To this day, there are still people who believe I was always a better basketball player than a football player. I mean, everybody’s got their own opinion, but obviously I made the right decision by sticking with football.”

While Morgan’s first love was clearly hoops, it turned out he was pretty good on the gridiron as well. By the time he got to H.D. Woodson High School, he had learned to channel his explosiveness and passion from basketball into football.

“Once I saw what guys like Jerry Rice and Randy Moss were able to do at the wide receiver position, I knew that’s what I wanted to be,” he said.

Morgan was a diehard Redskins fan growing up — Art Monk, Doug Williams and John Riggins were his favorite players from the glory days — but he wasn’t able to go to games very often.

“We barely had enough money for groceries or to keep the water or heat on in the house, so I didn’t get to go to a lot of games. But I got to hear a lot of them on the radio and I tried to sneak in to a couple of them when I could,” Morgan said with a laugh.

Because Redskins game were such a rarity, football was more of a hobby or a way to hang out with friends than a possible career choice for Morgan. In fact, it wasn’t until his freshman year at Virginia Tech, when he had a breakout game in the 2005 Sugar Bowl against Auburn, that Morgan began to believe he truly had a shot at playing in the NFL.

Click here for the full article.

28Nov

nick sundberg brings toughness to special teams

(photo by Brian Murphy)

[Editor’s note: This season, the Washington Redskins have asked my brother, Joel Murphy, and I to occasionally write feature stories for the team’s official website, Redskins.com. This article, which was written by Joel, is our latest contribution, so please check it out.]

The Redskins’ 40-32 victory over the New Orleans Saints to start this season will long be remembered as the impressive beginning of the Robert Griffin III era. But it should also be remembered as the game where Redskins long snapper Nick Sundberg played two quarters with a broken arm.

“We’ve got a story to tell to our kids and our grandkids, how we played with a guy who played a whole game with a broken arm,” defensive tackle Barry Cofield said after the game. “I’m going to remember both. RGIII’s going to come first, obviously, because that’s what they’re going to ask me about, but when my grandson scrapes his knee, I’ll tell him about the guy who played with a broken arm.”

During the first punt of the game, with under a minute left in the second quarter, Sundberg’s left arm got pinned between two helmets and he broke his ulna, one of the two long bones in the forearm. At halftime, the injury was confirmed by the training staff. The bone was broken three-quarters of the way through approximately three inches below his wrist.

“I had to make a decision on what we were going to do for the rest of the game,” Sundberg remembers. “Will Montgomery, the center – he’s our backup snapper – I was watching him snap a little bit and I made the executive decision that I’m going to fight and get through the game.”

As someone who would let his mom, who works for TASER, test out products on him growing up, Sundberg is no stranger to pain. Of course, breaking an arm is a different sort of pain from getting tased.

“The TASER hurts more for a shorter period of time,” said Sundberg. “It’s five seconds of agonizing pain, but after the five seconds, it’s over. You don’t have to feel it anymore. You get up off the ground like, ‘That sucks, but at least it’s over.’ The arm, it just lingers and lingers and lingers.”

To manage the pain during the game, Sundberg tried to convince himself it wasn’t that bad.

“I tried to use some positive reinforcement techniques to tell myself it didn’t hurt as bad as it really did,” Sundberg said. “I snapped the ball eight or nine times after that, but honestly it wasn’t nearly as bad on the field as it was warming up to actually snap. That’s a tough one because I’m crazy about my warm-up regimen. I snap a certain amount of balls before every snap. On the sidelines, trying to throw them back was more difficult than being in the game because, when I was in the game, I was able to turn everything off and let my body react. On the sideline, I was very much aware of how much my arm hurt.”

Somehow, Sundberg was able to make it through the rest of the game, snapping the ball for four punts, two field goal attempts and two extra points in the second half. The good news was that he was able to contribute to his team’s big win over the Saints. The bad news was that Sundberg was placed on eight-week injured reserve and the ‘Skins brought in Justin Snow to take over his job in the interim.

The third-year pro still showed up to the Redskins training facility every day, but he wasn’t able to practice with his teammates for the first six weeks. He still attended all of the team meetings and did his best to be an active part of the team, even though he couldn’t contribute on the field. Being injured and forced out of action was tough, not just physically, but mentally.

“I’ve never been hurt before. I’ve never missed practice, let alone a game, so I’ve never not been able to play. I think the most difficult thing was just watching my team play without me from home,” he said.

Head coach Mike Shanahan doesn’t allow players on injured reserve to stand on the sideline during games. So while Sundberg could have driven to FedEx Field to watch the games from a luxury box in the stands, he elected instead to watch the games at his house.

While he looked forward to seeing his team compete and wanted to see them win, it was still difficult for Sundberg to enjoy the game as a spectator.

“It’s hard to just be a fan because I’ve got so much more invested, especially with knowing everybody,” Sundberg said. “I wanted everyone to play well and wanted the team to succeed even if I wasn’t playing. It was tough, but I didn’t really have a choice.”

The most challenging part of watching the broadcast from home, Sundberg said, was listening to the commentators weigh in on his team and his teammates.

Click here for the full article.

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