Lost years, L.A. exit have changed Cooper Kupp. He’s an enriched, new Seahawk
Cooper Kupp had gone from the flatlands to the summit of his sport. He’d made football’s highest peak.
Kupp had been ignored coming out of Davis High School in Yakima by the college program he wanted to play for: Then-coach Steve Sarkisian’s University of Washington. Kupp’s grandfather Jake played on two Rose Bowl teams for the Huskies.
“That was too bad,” Cooper’s father and Jake’s son Craig Kupp told The News Tribune in 2021. “We tried everything we could. My dad was pretty disappointed. “We just couldn’t get the light of day from them.”
Cooper went instead to lower-division Eastern Washington, in Cheney. He soared as an Eagle. Kupp became the Walter Payton Award winner as the best player in the Football Championship Subdivision in 2015.
The Los Angeles Rams selected the quick, sure wide receiver in the third round of the 2017 NFL draft. Kupp started six of 17 games and was inactive for two as a rookie. He missed the latter half of his second pro season, 2018, on the Rams’ injured-reserve list with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee.
Then Kupp transformed. From 2019-21, he became the league’s most prolific slot receiver on Sean McVay’s quick-strike offense. Kupp had seasons with 94, 92, then an NFL-best 145 catches. He also led the league with 1,947 yards and 16 touchdown receptions in 2021. The yardage was the second-most in NFL history by a receiver. He was 17 yards from Calvin Johnson’s NFL record for a season set in 2012.
For all that, Kupp was the NFL offensive player of the year for 2021. The Rams advanced to that season’s Super Bowl, in February 2022. And Kupp went off. He had eight catches on 10 targets for 92 yards and two touchdowns, and L.A. won it all.
So did Kupp. He was named Super Bowl most valuable player. Before the 2022 season he re-signed with the Rams on a three-year, $80 million contract, with $75 million guaranteed.
Kupp, his college-sweetheart wife Anna, and their then-two young children had made it.
Then, Kupp fell off the top of the football world.
He spent half the 2022 season and a month of the ‘23 season on L.A.’s injured-reserve list, with high-ankle sprain and hamstring injuries. His receptions declined from the 145 in 2021 to 75, 59 and 67 through last seasons. His yards went from the 1,947 to 812, 737 and 710. Touchdowns, 16 to six, five and six. His yards after catches dropped from 846 to 422, 322 and last season 269.
By about every measure, Kupp became a relatively average, injured, now-32-year-old receiver. That’s why this past March the Rams released him. They got out of the final two years of their $80 million contract with him.
The Seahawks signed Kupp two days later. They convinced him not only in coming home to the team he and his family watched in the Kingdome when he was little kid, but of the direction coach Mike Macdonald has Seattle headed with an all-new offense for 2025. He got a three-year, $45 million deal.
Now three weeks into his first training camp with the Seahawks, Kupp has a new perspective of who he is. Not just as a football player. As a man, husband, father and son.
The News Tribune asked Kupp what he learned about himself during his last three, lost years that led the Rams to give up on him.
His response was refreshingly self-aware, and vulnerable.
“It forced me to bring to life all the things I’ve spoken about in terms of the journey, enjoying what the journey is and not being so reliant on the end result,” Kupp said.
“(World no.-1 ranked golfer) Scottie Scheffler talked about this.”
“You have to enjoy the journey,” Kupp said. “The ends are going to take care of themselves. And those are very fleeting moments. Everyone is working and wants to win it all. Everyone wants to go out on Sunday and play well and walk off that field with a win. At the end of the day, in this game, you don’t have control of that. You do everything you can to set yourself up for it, but you just don’t have control of it.”
This was a Saturday in training camp, weeks before the real games begin.
Yet it was Kupp back on the summit. Of real life.
“If you get lost in all your joy and fulfillment being found in that, you’re never going to find it,” Kupp said. “These last few years when things haven’t gone my way, when there’s been injuries, or things just haven’t worked out, I forced myself to say it’s not about that. It’s about waking up in the morning and being excited about going out and doing whatever that day holds and bringing joy and spirit to it that is positively impacting the people around me.”
“That’s where I found a lot of my joy. I’m going to be the same person regardless of what’s happening in football. I’m going to be the same person when I go home to my kids, when I go home to my wife. I’m going to be the father that I need to be for them, and the husband that I need to be for my wife.
“Ultimately that is more important.”
What in particular from the last three years in L.A. triggered Kupp’s new perspective?
“I talked about that a lot early in my career. And until that stuff is laid out there for you, you can either be about it, or shut up,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hey this is it. These are the moments that from the outside looking in are not fun. But I get to go into it with the mindset that I get to enjoy this journey.
“This is my life. And I am incredibly blessed to be surrounded by the people that I’ve been surrounded by, at home and through football. Mentors I’ve been around. The friends that I have. The relationships that have been built over the years of playing ball, I’m very thankful for it.
“And I don’t take that stuff for granted.”
Cooper Kupp’s leadership
Kupp’s impressions of the Seahawks in his first month with them?
He loves what Macdonald is preaching, and building. He loves what new Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is doing with him: back in his slot-receiver role. He loves how he’s connecting so far with a new quarterback, Sam Darnold.
Kupp is the oldest receiver on the Seahawks. He’s nine and 10 years older than Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Seattle’s 100-catch man last season, and rookie Tory Horton. Those are the two primary receivers Kupp’s been playing with on the starting offense in this camp.
That seniority has Kupp with a new perspective on his leadership, too.
“As the years have gone on the shift happened naturally,” he said. “When you come in as a rookie and you are just trying to figure it out, you’re trying to get through camp, being in a new city and all the different things that come along with that. You’re trying to build yourself into being an impactful player for the organization.
“As time has gone on, I’ve built this place where I don’t just want to be an impactful player, I want to be an impactful person. As you’re in the building, how can you bring all the people along with you and have that shift that goes from being poured into by the vets and by the coaches but being able to give that back to a lot of players and coaches?”
And his impression of the Seahawks players and coaches in that regard?
“The coaches here have been awesome about allowing there to be dialogue that goes both ways between players and coaches, challenging each other in the right ways,” Kupp said.
“It is something that’s very important. And something Mike has done a great job at fostering here.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
