From obscurity to the MVP of the Super Bowl
Kupp takes his star turn on biggest stage
From zero stars, to THE star. That’s some trail Cooper Kupp blazed over the past 10 years to become Super Bowl MVP.
About 300,000 American teens annually play football in their last years of high school. Of those, about the top 30 are deemed five-star college recruits — the cream of the crop. The next 400 or so are awarded four stars by recruiting agencies, followed by 1,300 with three stars, then another 2,000 with two stars.
Kupp was a zero-star college recruit coming out of Yakima, a city of less than 100,000 people in the remote south-central region of Washington state, about 230 km southeast of Seattle and about a four-hour drive from Vancouver.
When he played his last game for Davis High School in November 2011, not a single U.S. university had offered him a football scholarship.
Zero stars. Zero interest. Zero college football prospects.
It was only in the two months leading up to college signing day that Kupp finally got a couple offers — from nearby Eastern Washington University (near Spokane and the Idaho border) and Idaho State, both in the second tier of NCAA Division I football (FCS), below the top-level 131 schools.
Kupp signed with EWU in February 2012. Ten years later, Kupp is not only the NFL’S most prolific wide receiver but the freshly anointed MVP of Super Bowl LVI.
On Sunday night, the 6-foot-2, 208-pounder scored the winning touchdown with 1:25 remaining to lift his Los Angeles Rams over the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20.
Kupp caught eight passes on the night from Matthew Stafford for 92 yards and two scores.
This after being named the league’s offensive player of the year for having led the league in the regular season in all three bellwether categories for pass-catchers: receptions (145), yards (1,947) and touchdowns (16).
In four playoff wins, Kupp added 33 catches for 478 yards and six scores. Kupp not only became the first NFL player to amass 2,000 receiving yards in a single season (including playoffs), but he set a bar so high — 2,425 — it might not be matched for a long time, if ever.
On Monday morning, at the annual day-after Super Bowl MVP news conference, the 28-year-old praised the woman he married some nine years ago, Anna Croskrey — even if the couple weren’t able to immediately celebrate Valentine’s Day together.
“We started dating our senior year in high school,” Kupp said. “While I was going through college (she allowed) me to concentrate on football, providing for us, when not many people are married as sophomores in college. But we believed when you get married you separate from your parents and you’ve got to figure out your way on your own.
“For her to do that, for the sacrifices that she has made for so long, I just think she deserves the world. I’m just incredibly thankful for her and everything that she’s done for me. I’m sure we’ll have something fun planned. I don’t know if it will be today. Maybe we’ll have to push Valentine’s Day back a few days.”
Kupp isn’t shy about publicly sharing his deep Christian faith and he went there Monday when asked about overcoming the pain of losing the Super Bowl game three seasons ago, then envisioning a victorious moment very much like last night’s.
“That’s my faith, that’s the most important thing in my life — believing that I have a purpose here, that I was placed with an intentionality of exactly where I am supposed to be,” he said. “It just gives me a peace, so much peace, to be able to play from a place of knowing the victory has already been won.
“There’s no pressure to strive to succeed on anything. I get to step into every single day and just enjoy the process, enjoy every moment, just be fully who I am and not feel failure in any way, but just be able to pursue success — and know that whatever happens, it is what it is.”
Kupp’s prowess as an elite blocker can help him in the pass game, too. As we saw on Sunday night.
Kupp got open on his first TD catch in the second quarter after looking like he was about to engage in a block to seal the edge on a run fake. But Kupp instead went out for a pass, curling back along the back of the end zone toward the deep right corner. Cincinnati’s defence bit on the run fake and no Bengals defender picked him up. Stafford easily hit a wideopen Kupp for the score.
On their game-winning touchdown connection, Stafford and Kupp succeeded on a quick back-shoulder lob to the right side of the end zone from a yard out. The play looked easy, but in fact demanded numerous levels of precision — in when Stafford released the ball, how hard he threw the lob and precisely to what spot, as well as in how Kupp figuratively pushed his defender backward in selling a back corner route, to when he stopped and turned to receive the pass.
That transcendent level of timing on both players’ part was no coincidence, as Kupp explained Monday.
“Stafford and I have spent a ton of extra time together,” he said. “I was adding it up in the car on the way here, just the extra time outside of the obligatory time (he and I spent together this season), and it was north of 500 hours this season.
“So if you spend that amount of time, just being able to talk football, talk about the preparation, the time you have, and focus on that kind of stuff, in those moments, it just becomes second nature.”