It was a good summer for Kirk Cousins and his wife, Julie Cousins. Kirk signed a three-year, $84 million contract with the Minnesota Vikings. According to Spotrac, the contract has $82.5 million guaranteed money, and Kirk will make $22.5 million this season. It also looks like Kirk and Julie are getting an endorsement check from Sleep Number thanks to their recent TV commercial appearance.
The commercial, which can be seen above, shows Kirk, Julie, their new son Cooper and even their dog. Kirk does the narration during the commercial, but Julie is shown using the Sleep Number technology as well.
This is the same couple that spent the offseason staying with their parents to help save money on rent. GQ detailed the Cousins’ frugality in 2017.
Still, for a good portion of the offseason, the eminently practical Cousins holes up beneath the floorboards of his teenage home in Holland, Michigan—a white, clapboard split-level on a street that ends in a cul de sac. He shares the space with his wife, Julie, who’s pregnant with their first child, a boy. The early months of the year are spent in a warmer climate: the basement of Julie’s parents’ place, just northeast of Atlanta. “It works well,” says Cousins. “We don’t pay rent.”
The Couple Was Waiting to Buy a Home Until Kirk Had More Long-Term Stability
This was of course before Kirk signed his new deal. Kirk’s very public contract negotiations with the Redskins have been well-documented, but Washington continued to use the franchise tag to avoid committing to the quarterback long-term. Washington traded for Alex Smith this offseason paving the way for Kirk to leave via free agency. Kirk explained to GQ that their frugality had to do with the uncertainty of his career.
On a low bluff, about seventy or eighty yards from the boat, just beyond the beach, sits a piece of lakefront property Cousins and Julie purchased this past winter after spotting it on Zillow last summer. They waited to buy because Cousins wanted to see how the season went, to make sure he was “in a place to be a starting quarterback making the salary that a starting quarterback makes.” He never expected this career to happen, even if he’d optimized himself to create the best possible chance that it would. Right now, on the parcel, there is only dune grass, an idle backhoe, and a foundation that was poured two weeks ago. Its pain-free construction is in his prayers-to-be-answered list.
Thanks to his new guaranteed deal with the Vikings, the couple does not have to worry anymore. Julie graduated from the University of Georgia and was previously an elementary school teacher. When the couple isn’t making matress commercials, they also enjoy dogs. Kirk and Julie had previously been fostering dogs before committing to their Goldendoodle Bentley full-time.
“That’s all Julie,” Kirk told The Washington Post. “She just loves dogs. She can’t get enough of it. And so when we got married, it was kind of understood — she had warned me when we were dating, that was kind of an expectation. So we foster them, and we just get one at a time, and when it finds a home, we give it to that home and we take another one from the shelter.”
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