Cooper Kupp at EWU’s Inferno, just before the 2014 season when he terrorized the Big Sky Conference with 1,400 yards and 16 TDs.
Young Kwak photo
With 3:20 left on the clock in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game, Seahawks fans were holding their collective breaths. Seattle was clinging to a 31-27 lead and faced a third-and-8 on their own 27-yard line. If the Rams defense could make a stop, the Hawks would be forced to punt the ball back to MVP-frontrunner quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Rams’ explosive offense — the only team that had really given Seattle’s elite D fits all year — with 3 minutes and two timeouts left.
So who did Seahawks QB Sam Darnold target for this season-defining play?
The greatest wide receiver in Los Angeles Rams’ history — Cooper Kupp.
The Yakima native and Super Bowl MVP when the Rams won it all back in 2022 started in the slot on the right side of the formation and ran a crisp underneath drag route to break free from Rams cornerback Cobie Durant. After snagging the ball thrown by Darnold, Kupp had just enough separation to reach out past the first down line as he was being corkscrew tackled to the turf.
It was the biggest play of the season for Kupp, who’d spent most of the year in Seattle in a supporting role after the former superstar was cut by the Rams after last season. After grabbing a touchdown earlier in the game, the former Walter Payton Award winner for best FCS football player during his tenure in Cheney at Eastern Washington University got revenge in the game’s biggest moment on the team that had discarded him, allowing the Seahawks to drain the clock to the point where the game was essentially a wrap by the time the Rams got the ball back. Now the Washington kid has a chance to capture a second Super Bowl title, this time with the team he grew up near.
Kupp returned to the state of Washington in 2025 to join the Seahawks.
Saskia Potter / Seattle Seahawks
While an NFL star coming out of Yakima is certainly unlikely, as the old adage goes, Kupp was born with football in his blood. His grandpa Jake was a Pro Bowl offensive guard and was inducted into the New Orleans Saints’ Hall of Fame while his dad, Craig, was a backup QB in the NFL. While Kupp was a standout at Yakima’s Davis High School, he was a 0-star recruit who didn’t receive a single scholarship offer until after his senior year, when Eastern Washington and head coach Beau Baldwin came calling.
After redshirting his freshman year, Kupp started for the Eagles in 2013 and was instantly elite. He set all-time FCS freshman records for receptions (93), receiving yards (1,691), and touchdown catches (21), earning All-American honors and winning the Jerry Rice Award for the best freshman in FCS.
“To say Coop’s got determination is probably an understatement,” says EWU head coach Aaron Best (who was the offensive line coach during Kupp’s tenure in Cheney) when we talked to him after the Seahawks NFC Championship victory. “He’s willing, wanting and going to get it done. He was a junkie for the game.”
Kupp never slowed down from there, leading the Eags to three FCS Playoff appearances, winning the Walter Payton Award his junior year in 2015, and closing out his senior year with FCS career records for receptions (428), receiving yards (6,464), and TD catches (73). (Reminder: the GOAT Jerry frickin’ Rice played in the FCS.)
In March, Cooper Kupp wore flannel and a Pearl Jam t-shirt to his introductory press conference. As a nine-year vet and Seahawk leader, he came through with key plays when the team needed them most.
Seattle Seahawks photo
“Production should be his middle name,” Best says. “He’s as productive as you can be. Every time he touched the ball we had a chance to score, and those guys don’t come very often.”
Despite any Big Sky football fan who’d watched Kupp terrorize defenses for four years knowing how undeniably legit he was, Kupp fell to the third round of the 2017 NFL Draft — the seventh wide receiver picked. But obviously that type of slight is only gonna motivate the type of hard worker that went from 0-star recruit to the NFL.
“It wasn’t his dream to play in the NFL,” Best emphasizes, “it was almost like him saying, ‘I will be in the NFL.’ He was going to make it happen.”
“Whenever you ask somebody, ‘What do you know about Eastern?,’ a lot of people say, ‘Red field and Cooper Kupp.’ Those things are in unison,” Best adds. “And it’s because of all the hard work and dedication that he put together here, on a college level. Ten years ago, no one knew who Cooper Kupp was, and now everybody in the world knows. The world knows and sees what we knew and saw.”
“Ten years ago, no one knew who Cooper Kupp was,” says Aaron Best, one of his coaches at EWU. “Now everybody in the world knows… and it’s because of all the hard work and dedication.”
EWU Athletics photo
After making the All-Rookie team and developing his chemistry with then Rams’ quarterback Jared Goff and his offensive mastermind coach Sean McVay in 2017, Kupp’s second year was marred by injury when he tore his ACL. While the Rams made a Super Bowl run, it was surely tough on Kupp, especially after the offense without him no-showed in a 13-3 loss to the Patriots in the big game.
He bounced back from injury in 2019, notching his first 1,000-yard season and finishing second in the league in touchdowns.
“Coop’s continually gotten better. He’s not a complacent individual. That’s the biggest thing — he’s not OK with being great, he wants to be elite, and he wants to be the best,” Best says. “He’s just wired differently than most people with enough skill set to be able to match his mindset.”
Another great season followed in 2020, but after the season, the Rams traded Goff and draft picks for Lions gunslinger Matthew Stafford. Things were about to skyrocket for the EWU alumnus.
Flat out: Cooper Kupp had the greatest wide receiver season of all-time in 2021. Developing an instinctive bond with Stafford, Kupp was named Offensive Player of the Year after achieving the ultra rare receiving triple crown by leading the NFL in receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns caught. And unlike the others who’d pulled off the feat, Kupp closed it out in the most storybook fashion by leading the Rams to victory in Super Bowl LVI and winning Super Bowl MVP. It simply doesn’t get better than that.
Seattle Seahawks photo
But that high Mount Everest level peak couldn’t last. The following three seasons saw Kupp’s production dip as he missed significant time with ankle and hamstring injuries. With his production and health in decline and his young wideout running buddy Puka Nacua emerging as a star, the Rams released the man who’d been their Super Bowl MVP a mere few years prior.
In the end, Kupp found a new home back home. The Rams’ division rival Seahawks ended up bringing him in to add depth to a thin wide receiver core that had just traded away D.K. Metcalf. While the wear and tear of his career has slowed Kupp a bit, he settled into more of a supporting role this season. He’s still an elite blocking wide receiver in the run game (long one of his most unheralded traits) and snagged 47 receptions for 593 yards during the regular season.
But as he’s done throughout his career, he’s stepped up his game in postseason play, ending with the TD and crucial late catch against the Rams that had to feel pretty sweet even though Kupp downplays notions of revenge.
“It’s another tale to his story where he gets to come ‘home’ to play for the hometown team and be productive, even if it isn’t situational moments,” Best says. “He’s such a team player and makes people around him better. He’s not maybe the main guy, but he can be the main guy in those situational moments.”
The Eagle great now has a chance to bring his home state another Lombardi Trophy in Sunday’s Super Bowl. There’s still gridiron heights for the Seahawk/Eagle (Eaghawk?) to soar. Even though it surely won’t happen, wouldn’t it be absolutely wild if the kid from Yakima won a second Super Bowl MVP?
Then again… Kupp has a way of flying past expectations.