His illustrious career with the Rams almost certainly is coming to an end, and All-Pro receiver Cooper Kupp can’t help but feel bruising disappointment about that.
He had heard the buzz for months, but that hardened into reality two weeks after the season ended with a narrow playoff loss at Philadelphia. It was then that Rams coach Sean McVay informed him the team would be moving in a different direction.
“I walked into Sean’s office and he said, ‘We’re going to trade you,’” Kupp told The Times in his first extensive public comments on the topic. “I asked if there were any other thoughts on ways to move forward, were there any other options to figure things out, and he said no, this is the way they wanted to go.”
Kupp, a cornerstone in the Rams’ rise from NFL also-rans to Super Bowl champions, took an almost passive, go-along-to-get-along approach to the news.
Read more: GM Les Snead says the Rams are on the clock to move Cooper Kupp, bolster roster
“In that moment, I made the decision that I didn’t want this to be a bitter thing in terms of our ending there,” he said. “I try to keep it as positive as possible and just be forward thinking about how to walk out of there and be able to shake each other’s hands and move forward.
“We did that. And as time has gone on I’ve had to deal with all the frustration, anger, sadness, all these things that as a human you process. Having to say goodbye to people and know that that door is closed. That’s been tough to walk through as the weeks have gone by.”
Kupp spoke last week after one of his rigorous daily workouts with two trainers and fellow Rams receiver Puka Nacua. They grind through those for two hours every morning, Monday through Friday, in a cavernous garage Kupp owns near Ventura. The place is in a nondescript business park but is loaded with state-of-the-art workout equipment and pulses with the type of music you’d hear in an NFL locker room. Every lift and exercise is specifically tailored to the receiver position, including the sprints and cone drills they run. There’s little conversation and no wasted time.
While Kupp said the door has closed on a possible return, McVay recently told reporters he would “never speak in absolutes” about the receiver’s future. Les Snead, Rams general manager, acknowledged that Kupp’s return is the “least likely” option for the team.
Kupp is scheduled to have a salary-cap number of $29.8 million this year with a base salary of $12.5 million and $5 million guaranteed. He is due a $7.5 million roster bonus by mid-month, creating a deadline to get a trade deal done.
“I’m just sitting here and not knowing where it is yet, what team we’re going to be playing for,” said Kupp, who often uses “we” to loop in his wife and family. “Do I have input? Yeah, I do. But at the end of the day, the Rams have let it be known they want to trade me. So that limits things. They’ve got to figure out how they’re going to make a deal. They’ve told me they’re working on it.”
Both McVay and Snead, when asked by The Times to respond to Kupp’s extensive comments on the situation, opted to refer to their previous public comments.
A third-round pick out of Eastern Washington, Kupp emerged as one of the biggest steals of the 2017 draft. He overcame a knee injury that cut short his second season, and in 2021 was not only the NFL’s offensive player of the year but most valuable player of the Super Bowl. His No. 10 jersey still fills the stands at SoFi Stadium.
“The only way to build a fan base is to give them moments,” he said. “It’s moments that people look back on and talk about. They talk about it with their kids. Those kids grow up and then have their moments with their parents. They experience these moments together and it builds and builds.
“Over the last eight years, we’ve had so many incredible moments, ones that I’m going to look back on always with my kids.”
Kupp and his wife, Anna, have a young family — three sons ages 6, 4 and 1 — so there’s plenty of memory making to come. And accordingly, Cooper believes he has at least four highly productive seasons remaining in him. He’s 31, and while some might see that as crossing a critical age threshold for a receiver, Kupp points out he was 24 when he entered the league and therefore isn’t as old in NFL years, if you will.
“I said at the beginning of last year that if I didn’t believe I could play football at a very high level — at a level where I see myself doing the things I want to do — I don’t want to be playing football anymore,” he said.
“And I can still do it. I want to do it for four more years at least, and I plan to be playing at a high level. That’s just where I see myself. When I see myself on film, I’m progressing. Things are moving forward.
“I’ve never relied on just outrunning someone. That’s never been my game. It’s always been setting someone up. That’s become something where, over time, I’ve gotten all these tools, so, ‘Which one do I use? When do I use it to win?’ That’s gotten better and better in terms of being able to see it, then snap into it as the play is taking place. The thinking slows down. The game slows down. You’re just reacting and the game becomes second nature. Every year that’s gotten better and better.”
There’s no denying, however, that Kupp’s role in the offense was on a downward trend, especially in the second half of last season. He missed four games early in the season because of an ankle injury, bounced back strong with five productive games, then was abruptly and somewhat mysteriously phased out down the stretch. In the last three games of the regular season — not counting the finale when starters were rested — he was targeted only three times each. Only one pass came his way in the playoff win over Minnesota, although he did catch five passes in the divisional game against the Eagles.
One of the reasons Kupp has been less of a focus has been the emergence of Nacua as the Rams’ No. 1 receiver the past two seasons. That was partly because of various injuries to Kupp in the past three years. What’s more, Nacua is in line for a big pay increase, likely after this season.
For his part, Kupp said he still has plenty of gas in the tank.
“The way I see myself is I’m ascending, even if people on the outside say I’m descending,” he said. “But they aren’t in our rooms. They aren’t hearing our game plans. They don’t see our practices. All they see is what happens on Sunday, and sometimes they don’t even see that and all they see is a stat line and decide, ‘Oh, this is who he is.’
“That’s not what defines a player. That’s not going to define who I am, certainly. I’m not going to allow that. But when you go through the things I’m watching — I go through every single rep, I feel every single rep I take. I diagnose every rep.
“I, with all the information, know that I’m moving in the right direction.”
Kupp’s entire football career has been about proving doubters wrong.
He was undersized and largely unrecruited out of Davis High in Yakima, Wash., where basketball was traditionally a bigger deal. He was a tenacious defender on the court, it should be noted.
But football was his best sport, and he was so small as a freshman that he hid ankle weights under his jeans to tip the scales at 112 pounds. Despite his impressive high school career, he was an afterthought when he arrived at Eastern Washington. That status didn’t last long, though, as he wound up establishing a slew of Football Championship Subdivision receiving records, among them career yards (6,464), catches (428), and touchdowns (73).
NFL teams took notice of those numbers, and future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning played a role in raising Kupp’s profile too. Kupp’s grandfather, Jake, was a blocker for quarterback Archie Manning with the New Orleans Saints decades ago.
Cooper Kupp worked as a counselor at the Manning Passing Academy for five years, and brothers Peyton and Eli Manning quickly recognized he was an outstanding receiver.
“Eli and I would argue over who got to throw to Cooper, because all of his routes were very precise,” Peyton told The Times in 2019. “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 a while 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.”
It was at that camp that Kupp first emerged on Snead’s radar screen. So the Rams GM loved it when Kupp ran a relatively sluggish 4.62-second 40-yard dash at the scouting combine. That cooled the interest of other teams and led to Kupp slipping in the draft, allowing the Rams to select him.
“You’ve seen the stages,” Kupp said. “You know pretty clearly the doubts that have been placed on me throughout every stage in my life. About what I couldn’t do in high school. What my expectations should be in college. Getting to the NFL and what the expectations were, and trying to get over those.
“This is just another chapter of the Rams doubting what I can be and who I can become, what I can do as a football player. And in that same vein I’m like, I’ve been through this. I know how to navigate these waters. I’m excited to do it.”
The notion of turning a deaf ear to doubters is something the Kupps try to instill in their sons.
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“Our boys are dreamers, huge imaginations,” Kupp said. “Our oldest son right now wants to be the youngest person ever to build an airplane. By 9 years old, he wants to build an airplane. So he’s got stacks of papers with drawings of airplanes, material lists and all this different stuff he’s going to need to do.
“It’s honestly exhausting because this morning he was going on and on about programming. He wanted to know how we were going to program something for a certain watch he needed to run the airplane. I’m like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to figure it out. I don’t know. I got the books for you to figure it out.’
“We’ll never tell him, ‘It’s unrealistic for you to think that you can build an airplane by the time you’re 9. As exhausting as all the questions are, it’s like, ‘Go. Do it. Go for it.’”
Just as hard as leaving the Rams for Kupp is leaving the people he and Anna have met in Southern California over nearly a decade.
“I feel it from a community standpoint as far as looking around us and seeing the people that God’s put in our life, and how much this has become home,” said Kupp, whose philanthropy has included working with local food banks, firefighters and Team Rubicon, which mobilizes veterans to continue their service to help during disasters and humanitarian crises.
“The community. The memories. The people. The investment of building what this has become… and not to be part of it moving forward is what makes it hard.”
We live in a world where answers are at our fingertips, a Google search away. But for the moment, his NFL future is shrouded in mystery.
“We’re in this place right now where we’re sitting here not knowing,” he said. “It’s not knowing something that’s a life-changing thing. It’s where your family is going to be living. People who are going to be around your kids. It’s a big deal. For us getting comfortable sitting in the unknown is not something people do anymore.”
He knows those answers will come soon.
“The Rams want to move on from me,” he said. “And I’m in this place right now where I get to go out there, and I’m so excited to be able to produce for another football team. Be who I am.”
So many questions. So little room for doubt.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
