Four years ago with the Rams, receiver Cooper Kupp had a season for the ages, culminating in the Super Bowl MVP award. Now with the Seahawks, Kupp is facing his former team with a Super Bowl berth on the line.
He was asked on Thursday whether he envisioned this possibility.
“No,” Kupp told reporters, “you take things one day at a time. I’ve touched on this a little bit, we all have a story. All these guys here that step on this field, they’ve all had a story to get them to this point. They’ve all had a journey of what this year has been, what the last few years have been to come to this point. Mine is just one of 53 that are going to be on that field. And my story, this is an unbelievable storyline, the chances of this ends up being what it is. And I’m really excited about that. But this is the Seahawks going into an NFC Championship game and trying to get the job done.
“So that’s the great thing about football. It’s all these guys. All these guys have different stories, and we all get to play for one another. I mean, it’s a powerful thing when all 50 guys are playing for their purpose. But it’s even more powerful when you’re playing for the guys next to you and the people lining up alongside you. And that’s what I’m excited about, is the guys that are in this room that you want to go out there and win for, the coaches that put so much time into this that you want to go and execute your job for. And we’ve got a lot of guys that live that, that are about it. And that’s what makes this a really exciting thing for me.”
Kupp has a far different role with the Seahawks than he did with the Rams. In the regular season, he caught 47 passes for 593 yards in 16 games, his lowest output since 2018, when he caught 40 passes for 566 yards in only eight games.
And while the bigger picture for the Seahawks is getting back to the Super Bowl for the first time in 11 years, Kupp has a chance to keep his former team from getting there, in the first year of his career elsewhere. It’ll be impossible for him to not think about that, even if he’s more focused on the goal of parlaying the No. 1 seed into a spot in the next game.
