Kirk Cousins punctuated his first rushing touchdown of the season with an interesting celebration during his Minnesota Vikings’ 27-17 victory over the Arizona Cardinals.
The quarterback’s interpretation of the touchdown celebration that receiver Adam Thielen utilized in the wake of a TD grab minutes earlier caught the attentive and not-always-approving eyes of the internet.
Some Love Cousins’ Celebration
Others Not So Much
Previous Cousins Celebrations
Cousins has gone viral for celebrations before, but usually of the postgame variety.
Cousins spawned a meme in Week 7 of the 2015 season, when he led his former team, the Washington Redskins, to a 31-30 victory after trailing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 24-0.
“You like that!” Cousins yelled in the direction of Tarik El-Bashir, then of CSN, in the bowels of FedEx Field, pointing like mad along the way. “You like that!”
“This one day I was standing there, minding my own business,” El-Bashir told ESPN. “Our camera was actually right in front of me, so I’m back against the wall looking at my notes. And I look up because there was a gap between the first group of players and the second group of players. I looked up and Kirk Cousins is looking dead at me. Like, right at me. And he just starts yelling, ‘You like that?! You like that?!’ And I started laughing.”
Apparently, such an outburst wasn’t all too uncommon.
“I have seen him yell, ‘You like that?!’ at [Redskins general manager] Scot McCloughan,” El-Bashir added. “He has this fire about him; he’s not necessarily the most outspoken leader in that locker room, but he has this smoldering, fiery side to him.”
The quarterback, who signed a three-year, $84 million contract this offseason, doesn’t know if he picked the phrase up from somewhere else or came to it on his own.
“I don’t know where it came from,” Cousins said, according to ESPN. “If I did hear it from someone else, I wouldn’t be able to remember enough to cite them. It honestly just came out of having a chip on your shoulder, trying to prove yourself and having a lot of passion.
“I think it’s been a good rallying cry for our team. Looking back at a great accomplishment, just saying, ‘You like that.’ It’s a stamp of approval on a good performance, kinda two thumbs up.”
A season later, it happened again. Leaving the field following a comeback win over his current team, Cousins shouted “Oooweee!”
And another meme was born.
But Cousins knew where he got this one — his teammate Quenton Dunbar.
Dunbar wrote on Instagram: “Everybody wondering where ‘ohhhweee’ came from it wasn’t from the rapper Young Ma she says ‘ohhhh’ in her song never said ‘ohhhweee.’ I got the slogan from the big homie in the hood Black Sam, so shout out to Black Sam. He is in jail so that slogan live through me #Overtown #TheStruggle #BlackSam #CaptainKirk.”
Two months after signing with the Vikings, Cousins filed a trademark for the phrase, “You Vike That!”
Kirk Cousins TD Celebration Lights Up the Internet