Report: Cooper Kupp’s Week 16 fumble sparked elevator incident between Rams, Seahawks coaches
Last week, Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp downplayed the storyline arising from the NFC Championship matchup with his former team, the Rams. On Sunday, Kupp had a major impact on the outcome.
The stat line (four catches, 36 yards, one touchdown) doesn’t do justice to his impact. Beyond the two key catches he made on the drive that pushed a 24-20 score back to an 11-point margin, Kupp’s fourth-quarter catch and dive on third and seven kept the Rams from getting the ball back with more than enough time for a game-winning drive.
After the game, Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com got to work on prospecting for some interesting nuggets about the broader Kupp-Rams relationship. And Silver struck gold.
In the Week 16 showdown between the two teams, which helped determine the location of Sunday’s rubber match, Kupp’s fumble with less than a minute to play in the second quarter ended a potential scoring drive. Then came halftime, and things got spicy.
Citing several unnamed witnesses, Silver reports that, as Rams and Seahawks assistant coaches shared an elevator from the press box to the locker room, a Rams offensive coach “asked which Seattle player had been responsible, and when another replied that it was Kupp, the coach snickered as though he expected the answer.”
Seahawks linebackers coach Chris Partridge became, per Silver, “enraged” by the reaction. Rams defensive pass rush coordinator Drew Wilkins “yell[ed] back” at Partridge. At that point, Partridge “had to be held back by other Seahawks coaches in the packed elevator, averting a possible skirmish.”
News of the incident spread. “It was kind of a thing in our locker room during halftime,” an unnamed Seahawks player told Silver.
And while that game happened more than a month ago, it was surely something the Seahawks remembered on Sunday. It was surely something Kupp, who exited the locker room without speaking to reporters, remembered, too.
“When it ended with the Rams, we weren’t in a good place,” Kupp told Silver earlier this month.
Kupp and the Seahawks are in a great place currently. And while it’s impossible to draw a straight line back to the elevator incident from December 18, it’s reasonable to assume that there was at least a trail of popcorn from that moment to Kupp’s motivation only 38 days later.
