In both of the last two seasons, he has been “franchise tagged,” which is a one-year-only deal that is management-speak for: we like you, we're just not sure we love you. Since the tag’s introduction in 1993, he is the only quarterback to receive it in back-to-back seasons. That’s in part because it’s insanely expensive (nearly $44 million over two years for Cousins). But it’s also because most teams aren’t as commitment-phobic as Washington, which remains unsure—even after a "tagged" season in which his numbers put him among the top ten QBs in the league—if he is the guy to build a franchise around. This is the cross Cousins has always had to bear: proving that he’s better than you think.

In high school, he wasn’t highly recruited. He turned down the only two football scholarships he was offered his junior year, from mid-majors Toledo and Western Michigan, because, in his words, “I couldn’t see myself there.” Translated from Midwesterner, that means: I was hoping for better. Then, in Cousins’s words, “a miracle”: Michigan State lost its top quarterback recruit during Cousins’s senior year and offered him a last-minute scholarship. At MSU, he broke school records for passing yardage and touchdowns. In 2012, when he was drafted by Washington in the fourth round it was with the understanding that he’d serve as a backup to the franchise’s newly minted savior, electric talent of a generation Robert Griffin III, who had been taken second overall in the very same draft. Then RGIII’s magical rookie season ended with knee surgery. Washington held out hope through 2013 and 2014 that Griffin could find the magic again, allowing Cousins to occasionally test drive the offense without ever handing over the keys. After Griffin’s 2015 preseason concussion, Cousins won the starting job—and now, two seasons later, having started 32 of 32 Washington games since, he just might become the guy that the franchise either never thought he could, or never really wanted him to be. Last year he threw for the third-most yards in the league (breaking his own Redskins franchise passing record from 2015), completing nearly 70 percent of his passes and earning his way to the NFL Pro Bowl as an NFC alternate.

Three months into dating [his wife] Julie, he bought a book called 101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged. “We got through most all of them,” he says, possibly in jest, but probably not.

But the imperfect calculus that goes into selecting the most visible member of a team involves cultural signifiers as much as it does stats. And Kirk Cousins betrays our expectations of what a superstar quarterback should be. He lacks the electricity of Hail-Mary-slinging, State-Farm-hawking Aaron Rodgers or Versace-tights-wearing, linebacker-bulldozing Cam Newton. And even though QBs Tom Brady and Andrew Luck are dweeby in their own right, you can sense the stone cold killer lurking beneath. But Kirk Cousins? Well, he has all of the quarterback tools, less of the swag that comes with being born with those things.

Last season, wearing a wireless mic in a game against the Packers, Cousins implored his teammates to get in on a sideline “high-five party”—and then, after a touchdown, to “Celebrate! As a team! Celebrate!” Earlier this month, he was recorded at training camp rapping the lyrics to Hamilton, lauding Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and praising…water. “Two hydrogens and one oxygen! That’s the recipe for good water.” In this year’s first preseason game, he walked onto the field singing I Wanna Dance With Somebody as it blared over the PA system.

At the end of this year, Kirk Cousins will have made nearly $44 million over the last two seasons as the starting quarterback of the Washington Redskins.

Or take, as the prime example of Cousins’s captivating earnestness, his most notorious moment as an NFL quarterback, born after he’d led the Redskins from a 24-point deficit to a thrilling win on a last-minute touchdown. On his trot to the locker room, Cousins screamed at a CSN reporter, “YOU LIKE THAT! YOU LIKE THAT!” Someone uploaded the moment to Vine, where it has been looped more than 47 million times, studied by fans who’ve been endlessly delighted and perplexed by Cousins Howard-Dean yawp. He plays with a genuine intensity, but also a confusing guilelessness. In the clip, there’s a Redskins employee in a suit tailing Cousins, and even he can’t help cracking a grin. His teammates had heard the catchphrase before from Cousins, who’d shouted it in practice. “When he first did it, I thought he was just joking around,” offensive tackle Trent Williams says. “Come to find out, he was dead serious.”