Rams’ Cooper Kupp is a 3rd-generation NFLer with PLU ties — and an issue for Seahawks
Craig and Karin Kupp flew down from Washington to California — again. They flew from the Pacific Northwest to Arizona the weekend before this last one.
They aren’t about to miss Cooper, their oldest of four children, produce one of the best seasons by a wide receiver in NFL history.
“We’ve been to eight games already,” one-time NFL quarterback Craig Kupp said last week while on the telephone from the family’s home in Yakima.
That was before his and his wife’s latest flight to Los Angeles to see his son’s Rams (9-4) host the Seahawks (5-8) at SoFi Stadium on Sunday.
Except, Cooper Kupp didn’t play on Sunday. Neither did his Rams or the Seahawks.
An outbreak of COVID-19 among 29 Rams players last week led the NFL and its players’ union to postpone the game to Tuesday at 4 p.m. It’s the first Tuesday game in Seahawks history.
Kupp’s parents had problems changing their travel plans to fit in the rescheduled game. So they kept their original plans. They spent an unexpectedly football-free weekend with Cooper, his college-sweetheart wife Anna and their two young boys in southern California. Older son Cooper Jameson is 3 years old.
Grandpa and Grandma Kupp already had plans for later this week. They are spending Christmas with Cooper’s younger brother Ketner at his young family’s home in Lakewood. Ketner Kupp got a tryout at linebacker for the Rams and was briefly Cooper’s NFL teammate in the summer of 2019. He just finished his first season as the linebackers coach at Pacific Lutheran University.
Craig and Karin are both members of the PLU Athletics Hall of Fame. Karin was a soccer All-American for the Lutes in the late 1980s. That’s when Craig was setting NAIA Division-II records as a PLU quarterback.
Karin’s parents also have a home in Lakewood, close to Ketner and his growing family.
Cooper and Ketner Kupp’s mom and dad were back in southern California this past weekend to see their older son during a season few in NFL history have ever had.
One is Jerry Rice, the immortal Hall-of-Fame wide receiver.
“It’s been fun every year just watching him improve and grow in his career,” Craig Kupp said.
“But, yeah, this year has been super special to see the confidence, the relevance, the trust the Rams are showing in Coop.”
The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton is taking notice. It said if Kupp gets at least 90 yards receiving Tuesday against the Seahawks’ 32nd-ranked pass defense (279 yards allowed per game), he will be the first player in the Super Bowl era back to 1967 to have 90 or more yards receiving in 10 straight games.
On Monday, the NFL revealed the first five players voted into the Pro Bowl now that balloting has ended. Kupp and All-World defensive tackle Aaron Donald are the two Rams already voted as Pro Bowl selections. The others are Tampa Bay Buccaneers champion quarterback Tom Brady, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and NFL rushing leader Jonathan Taylor of the Indianapolis Colts.
It’s the 28-year-old Kupp’s first Pro Bowl selection.
It’s almost certainly not going to be his last.
Three generations of NFL Kupps
This is a three-generation NFL success story, with roots crisscrossing Pierce County.
Cooper Kupp’s grandfather, Craig’s dad Jake Kupp, played on two Rose Bowl teams for the University of Washington. He became a Pro Bowl guard for the New Orleans Saints into the 1970s. Jake Kupp is in the Saints Hall of Fame as one of the blockers for New Orleans icon Archie Manning, Peyton’s and Eli’s dad.
Craig Kupp went from PLU into the NFL as a backup quarterback with the Phoenix Cardinals and then behind Troy Aikman with the Dallas Cowboys.
Cooper Kupp is going from Davis High School in Yakima to Eastern Washington University to NFL superstardom with the Rams.
Last week in Los Angeles’ big NFC West win at Arizona, Kupp caught a career-high 13 passes for 123 yards and a touchdown. It was his fourth game this season with at least 10 receptions. It was his fifth game with at least 100 yards.
His 113 catches, 1,489 yards receiving and 12 receiving touchdowns all lead the league. He’s four games away from winning the NFL receiving triple crown, something no one has done since Steve Smith in 2005. Kupp needs to average 119 yards over Los Angeles’ last four games to set the league’s all-time record for yards receiving in a season. Calvin Johnson’s 1,964 in 2012 for the Detroit Lions is the record.
With Robert Woods out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee, L.A. quarterback Matthew Stafford has been targeting Kupp more.
And from everywhere.
What makes Kupp such a challenge for the Seahawks, in a game Seattle has to win Tuesday to keep its slim playoff hopes alive? It’s the crazy amount of ways the Rams employ him.
Against the Cardinals Kupp became the first player since 2016 to have a reception from all seven pre-snap alignments an eligible receiver can have in a game, according to NFL NextGen Stats. He had two catches while wide left, four from the left slot, one tight on left end, one out of the backfield, one tight on right end, three from the right slot and one from out wide right.
In the first nine games this season Kupp had 74 receptions for 1,019 yards and 10 touchdowns. He is the second player in the Super Bowl era with at least 1,000 yards receiving and 10 touchdowns in the first nine games of a season.
The only other player to achieve that is Rice, the best and most-accomplished receiver, ever.
That actually fits Kupp more than you may think.
While at Eastern Washington, Kupp won the 2013 Jerry Rice Award in college football, given to the top freshman player in the Football Championship Subdivision.
From his late high school through college years, Kupp got to be a counselor at the Manning Passing Academy at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. It was a coup. Because of the superstardom of Peyton and Eli Manning, their academy has become the nation’s premier offensive football skills camp in the country for young players.
Rams general manager Les Snead noticed five Junes in a row at the camp that Peyton and Eli Manning fought over who got to have this Cooper Kupp kid from the Pacific Northwest as his personal receiver, to demonstrate drills. Snead figured if Kupp was good enough for Peyton Manning, he’d be good enough for the Rams.
“Eli and I would argue over who got to throw to Cooper, because all of his routes were very precise,” Peyton Manning told the Los Angeles Times. “He had great control of his body. You always knew where he was going, when he was going to break out or break in. For a quarterback and receiver, sometimes it takes awhile to develop that timing. But he was one of those guys who right away for me and Eli the timing was easy.
“And of course he caught everything, as well.”
Kupp first got to the Manning Passing Academy through his grandfather Jake’s relationship as Archie Manning’s former teammate with the Saints.
“There was the connection,” Craig Kupp said.
“That was a really neat thing for him.”
‘Swiss Army knife’
Seahawks offensive coordinator Shane Waldron was the Rams’ tight ends coach in 2017. He helped Snead evaluate the Rams’ plans to draft Kupp that year. L.A. did, in the third round.
Waldron said all the ways Rams coach Sean McVay is using Kupp this season is what he saw Kupp doing on the red turf at Eastern years ago.
“A little bit of everything,” Waldron said. “I’ll tell you what, he threw a lot of passes, I do remember that. The red field there and he’s throwing touchdown passes from a variety of different trick plays.
“He was a great player. He showed that unique ability to separate and get open. ...That separation ability and being able to stay grounded after the catch and make plays after the catch was something he showed right away.”
Craig Kupp says his son is playing now and being used like coach Rick Clark used him at Davis High School in Yakima through 2011. Cooper Kupp was called a “Swiss Army knife” at Davis, where he was an all-state receiver and defensive back. Cooper talked to then-PLU coach Scott Westering about following his dad in playing for the Lutes, but Cooper sought to play at the highest college level possible.
Craig and his father tried to get UW and then-Huskies coach Steve Sarkisian’s staff interested in recruiting Cooper, to have him play where his grandfather played.
They weren’t interested.
“That was too bad,” Craig Kupp said. “We tried everything we could. My dad was pretty disappointed. We just couldn’t get the light of day from them.”
But, Cooper Kupp’s dad said, “it all worked out.”
More than pretty well.
“He scored points in college. Those Eastern teams ran spread offense,” Craig Kupp said. “They had Coop coming out of the backfield, coming from everywhere.”
Kupp’s first breakout season in the NFL came in 2019, when Waldron was the Rams’ passing game coordinator. Kupp had 94 receptions, ninth-most in the league. He tied for second in the league with 10 touchdown catches. Last season he had 92 receptions.
This season, he’s at another level. An All-Pro one.
His dad sees a primary reason for that.
“Last year and the year before, the Rams went to ‘12’ personnel more,” Craig Kupp said, referring to one running back and two tight ends, often with just two wide receivers. “He wasn’t in that package as much.”
Then this spring the Rams lost their top and more versatile of those two tight ends, Gerald Everett. He signed in free agency with the Seahawks. Without Everett, the Rams aren’t in “12” personnel as much. It’s more three and four wide receivers.
Cooper Kupp has gone from playing 80% of Los Angeles’ offensive snaps in 2019 and ‘20 to 93% this season.
Everett has seen Kupp’s NFL growth more than any Seahawks player.
“He’s just a guy that has the drive to be great and the will and consistency and the work ethic,” Everett said. “I’ve seen him come to the facility and do everything that he can. That’s why he’s successful.”
More than any other Ram, Kupp is the weapon that threatens Seattle’s slim playoff hopes the most Tuesday.
What advice would Everett give to Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. to slow the Rams’ offense and win for only the fifth time over L.A. in these rivals’ last 15 meetings?
“Shut him down,” Everett said.
He meant Kupp.
“I think we should go man. And if we don’t, then we should definitely have a bracket set for him,” Everett said.
That means double coverage in zone, with a defender in front of Kupp short and another behind him deep.
Thing is, Kupp has killed man coverage by arraying all over the field then racing across it for catches and runs after the catch. He’s crushed zone coverage with his wits and knowledge of where the holes are in that, too.
“Cooper’s a great guy and a great athlete. He’s definitely going to try to find a way to get the ball,” Everett said. “I know McVay is definitely going to find ways to get him the ball.”
With 151 targets through 13 games, Kupp is likely to have McVay find ways to get him the ball at least 11 times Tuesday.
Self-made success
Cooper Kupp’s best skill may be his mind, how hard he is willing to work to excel.
“He’s my son and I’m going to be biased,” Cooper Kupp said, “but he’s a pretty special talent. The way he thinks, his philosophy, he wants to get better every day. He sets a goal and works to get better every day.
“He’s been that way since high school. And he just keeps doing it. There’s been so many people that say he doesn’t have the athletic ability, for whatever reason. And he keeps doing it.
“He’s a special breed.”
Waldron recognizes and appreciates what Kupp’s become. Tuesday, he will be doing that from the opposite sideline.
“Every time you draft someone, you’re hoping for the best for him,” Waldron said. “Then when guys get in the building ... Cooper’s a great example of a guy that got in the building and just does the right thing all of the time and works his tail off to perfect his craft. The results have come, and they’re not a surprise.
“When you’re around that guy or get to know him — just like we talked about (Seahawks record-setter) Tyler Lockett or these guys that are great players in this league — you see that work ethic. That work ethic matches the talent they have, and great things happen.”
There is one thing Craig Kupp does not like about his son’s wondrous 2021 season.
His beard.
“We are going to let the beard go all year,” Cooper Kupp told Rams broadcaster J.B. Long on the Rams Revealed podcast last month.
“I’m going to keep things lined up. I’m going to keep things somewhat nicely cut. But I’m letting it go.”
It’s a decidedly — and shaggy — Pacific Northwest look for a now-L.A. star.
“Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is with the beard,” Cooper’s dad said. “I’m not a big fan.”
This story was originally published December 20, 2021 at 1:19 PM.
