Cooper Kupp is coming home: Seahawks have 3-year deal with Yakima’s Rams Super Bowl MVP
Cooper Kupp was having the season that changed his life, on his way to becoming not only a Super Bowl champion but also its MVP.
Craig and Karin Kupp flew from Cooper’s native Yakima to Southern California, to Arizona, to all over the NFL to attend their son’s games for the Los Angeles Rams in that 2021 season. They saw him dominate the NFL. They saw almost all his league-leading 145 receptions, his league-best 1,947 yards and NFL-topping 16 touchdowns that year.
That season three-plus years ago they saw Cooper become 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: Jerry Rice, only the best and most-accomplished receiver, ever.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame took note as it was happening that season that Kupp was going to be the first player in the Super Bowl era back to 1967 to have 90 or more yards receiving in 10 straight games.
He ended up doing that 13 games in a row.
And his folks from Yakima saw all it in, person.
Kupp’s parents traveled back to Los Angeles at the end of their son’s Pro Bowl season in Feb. 2022, to be in the stadium for Super Bowl 56 and watch their man win the Super Bowl MVP award.
Craug and Karin Kupp, both in the Pacific Lutheran University Athletics Hall of Fame, don’t need to take a plane to see him play anymore.
Cooper is coming home.
The Yakima native and Eastern Washington Eagle the Rams released this week in a salary-cap move agreed Friday to sign with his home-state Seahawks as a coveted free agent. The 31-year-old wide receiver announced his return to his home state online on Twitter/X Friday afternoon.
“Washington back across my chest. Let’s go!!!!!” Kupp posted, over a drawing of him wearing his number 10 in a Seahawks white jersey over navy team pants.
A league source told The News Tribune Kupp’s contract with Seattle is for three years. It’s believed to be worth a maximum of $45 million, including performance and incentive bonuses.
The Seahawks commemorated the contract on Twitter/X by posting an image of a Seattle blue, plastic Solo party cup....er, Kupp.
The Seahawks made the deal for Kupp five days after they traded top wide receiver DK Metcalf to the Pittsburgh Steelers. When they did that trade, they had indications from the Rams they were going to release Kupp this week. A league source told the TNT at the beginning of this week Kupp has been a prime free-agent target for Seattle since the team traded Metcalf, and last week released 10-year Seahawk Tyler Lockett.
The Seahawks have replaced a two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver plus their longest-tenured player with a home-state Super Bowl MVP and champion.
Metcalf’s trade and the Seahawks’ interest in Kupp began two days after Seattle traded quarterback Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders.
After winning a Super Bowl with Matthew Stafford throwing passes to him in Los Angeles, Kupp will now have former Minnesota Vikings starter Sam Darnold as his quarterback. The 27-year-old Darnold signed a three-year free-agent deal worth up to $100.5 million at Seahawks headquarters on Thursday.
Kupp’s best season was his Pro Bowl and Super Bowl-winning one of 2021. He had 145 catches with 1,947 yards and 16 touchdowns — plus 33 receptions with six more touchdowns in three Rams playoff games that year.
He’s been beset by injuries his three seasons since then. He’s missed a combined 18 games in the 2022, ‘23 and ‘24 seasons. His receptions have dropped from 145 in 2021 to 59 and 67 catches the last two seasons. That and the emergence of wide receiver Puka Nacua are why L.A. released Kupp, two years into his contract extension.
Kupp, Jaxon Smith-Njigba coming off a 100-catch season and newly signed free agent Marquez Valdes-Scandling are poised to be Seattle’s top three wide receivers in 2025.
Kupp’s Pierce Country roots
The Kupps’ 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 — and now back home, to the Seahawks.
Coach Rick Clark used Kupp in just about every skill position on the field at Davis High School in Yakima through 2011. 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 won the 2013 Jerry Rice Award in college football, given to the top freshman player in the Football Championship Subdivision.
Peyon and Eli Manning’s camp counselor
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 in 2021. “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 told the TNT in 2021. “That was a really neat thing for him.”
Now, the Mannings’ former camp counselor in Louisiana is back home in Washington.
The Seahawks are banking, potentially up to $45 million, on him once again being healthy — and what his Dad knows Cooper Kupp is.
“He’s my son and I’m going to be biased,” Craig Kupp said four years ago, “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.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 4:39 PM.
