Cooper Kupp was unceremoniously cast aside by the Rams. A year later, he’s playing a key role for a rival in the Super Bowl
By Kyle Feldscher, CNN
San Jose, California (CNN) — A year ago, Cooper Kupp could barely hide his heartbreak: The Los Angeles Rams, the only NFL team he’d ever played for, made it clear they were done with him.
A February 3, 2025, post on X by the wide receiver revealed the Rams were trying to trade him. Kupp was the MVP of Super Bowl LVI who hauled in the winning touchdown to deliver a championship to the Rams on their home field. He was Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford’s go-to option for years. He was the cornerstone of their franchise, still producing despite injuries that limited the years after the Super Bowl win.
And, as of that first week of February 2025, he was done in LA. The Rams eventually released him, simply cutting him loose – a franchise icon cast out into the cold.
Kupp is back in California this week, about 300-some-odd miles away from his old stomping grounds, preparing to play in Super Bowl LX for the Seattle Seahawks – another NFC West team that had been game-planning against him for eight years.
The team Seattle beat to get to the game’s biggest stage? Well, the football gods have a sense of humor.
“It was a tough ending in LA, and so to be able to get here to have the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl – and I mean, just for the scriptwriters to put the Rams in the NFC Championship against the Seahawks, that was a pretty dastardly thing by them,” Kupp said on Monday with a laugh.
Kupp’s no longer the top option for his team, but the role he’s played in getting the Seahawks all the way to Santa Clara for Sunday’s Super Bowl can’t be understated.
His mantra of “process over results” resonates with his younger teammates, particularly star wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba who has taken on the starring role Kupp once held in LA. Since the win that catapulted Seattle into Super Bowl LX, Kupp has been sharing his experience of going to two different Super Bowls with the Rams with players who are playing in February for the first time.
“What Coop has brought to this team, in his words, is ‘process over results.’ And you know, it’s not about, the game is the game and we’re going to be ready for it, and I’m going to give it my all each and every single game,” Smith-Njigba said Tuesday.
“For us, it’s about process, making sure we’re ready, making sure we know exactly where we need to be in the run game and pass game. And, you know, I think he’s brought that to me and the team, and it’s excelled (for) us.”
Only in sports can a 32-year-old be considered an elder statesman, but that’s what Kupp has become for this Seahawks team, which has one of the youngest rosters in the NFL. It’s a role that he can’t help but embrace.
“They’re such good football players in their own right. I came alongside them to be an open book, like if there’s something they want to, you know, an idea they had, or something they wanted to ask me, like, I want to be right there alongside of them,” he told reporters of his role on the team.
“But I mean, more than anything else, I want to be a good teammate. I want to be a good teammate to those guys.”
Seizing an opportunity
One team’s cut is another team’s star.
It happens so often in sports, where a player is unceremoniously dumped by his employer and is left questioning what just happened. The self-doubt inevitably floods in – the questions about whether you can still go at the top level, whether you meant as much to the team as the team meant to you, whether anyone else will want you if the team for which you won a title suddenly doesn’t.
Kupp surely felt all those feelings. But they didn’t last long.
“Whenever the first time we were actually allowed to reach out to Coop, I had him on the line,” said Mike Macdonald, the Seahawks head coach, “and just said, ‘Look like we don’t get a lot of opportunities to really acquire a player like you, especially early in our program.’ And what better player to bring in early than Cooper Kupp.”
Kupp signed in Seattle two days after he was officially released by the Rams, heading back to the Pacific Northwest – he was born in Yakima, Washington, went to Eastern Washington University and lived outside Portland during the offseason for many years.
He wasn’t brought in to be the focal point. He was brought in to be the “force multiplier,” as Macdonald called him.
“He’s that with the receiver room. You can see it with the effect with a lot of our guys, like Jax, is obvious, but really the rest of our young receivers,” Macdonald told reporters, “and that’s rippled all the way throughout the whole team, offense, defense, special teams, all three phases. He’s helped me.”
And then Macdonald added wistfully: “And then to see him make plays in the championship when the stakes are highest was really, really special. Really happy for him.”
Facing his old team
Kupp’s play in the NFC championship game against the Rams was the perfect combination of who he is now and who he was in LA.
His stat line was underwhelming for someone who once combined with Stafford to drag the Rams to a Super Bowl title. He was thrown six passes, caught four of them and had a grand total of 39 yards. He spent most of the game as a decoy as Smith-Njigba showed out with 10 catches for 153 yards.
But one of Kupp’s catches went for a touchdown, the score that ultimately broke the Rams’ back and proved to be the final points needed to secure a trip to the Bay Area.
Kupp lined up on the far right of the offense, the widest receiver in a triple-receiver set. He burst from the line and suddenly stopped, finding a soft spot in the Rams’ secondary into which Darnold fired a laser of a pass. Kupp turned up-field with four Rams defenders closing in.
He crouched and put a shoulder into the chest of one defender while he dragged another who was wrapped around his legs. He broke through them and slid through the arms of a third would-be tackler, falling into the end zone as Lumen Field absolutely exploded.
It was the kind of smart veteran decision that Kupp was brought to Seattle to make and the kind of gritty, powerful, clutch moment that he made look routine during his years in Hollywood. Judging by Darnold’s eyes during the play, he was probably the third or fourth option on that play but he was the right choice.
That play, combined with the stout Seahawks defense making plays in the final quarter, sent the Rams on vacation and put Seattle in the Super Bowl. A fitting way to put a cap on a year of uncertainty.
“There’s so many layers to it. Obviously, there’s the career side of things, and the closing down of being a part of a great organization, what we had built there, what I’ve been able to be a part of and the relationships I’ve built with so many of the players there, some of the coaches – the way that that ended and just not ending in a great place,” Kupp said Tuesday.
“Then there’s a family side of things. Once that comes to an end, you know, you now know that you’re moving, you’re uprooting your family and going somewhere else. And we had spent so much time putting down roots and building community there and not knowing whether that was the end of that, whether those relationships would continue.
“Then I’ve got to talk to my boys, I’ve got to talk to my wife about what life is going to be like in some new city, what life’s gonna be like when moving. It was something that was new to us, something that our boys have never experienced before.
And then heading into something where now you’re in a new city and you’re playing for a team that’s gonna go back and play against the team that you just left, twice a year, and you know, we were lucky enough to see him three times a year.”
That uncertainty will be gone for at least a few hours on Sunday. A year after seeming like he might, however improbably, be done playing at the highest level, Cooper Kupp plays for a title.
“There’ll be a time to be able to really dive into that,” he said, “but I’m excited to be here right now. Excited to be here right now and competing for a world title.”
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