RENTON — As he walked the long hallway from his new locker room to the team meeting room, Cooper Kupp passed hundreds of framed photos. They were from all the Seahawks’ victories back to the team’s expansion season.
That was 1976. Seventeen years before Kupp was born, in Yakima.
Wearing a thick flannel over a vintage Pearl Jam T-shirt — yeah, he’s definitely from here — Kupp zeroed in on the photos of Doug Baldwin playing in Seattle’s mid-2010s Super Bowl seasons. Kupp, the All-Pro wide receiver and Super Bowl 56 MVP with his now-former Los Angeles Rams, was a senior at Davis High School in Yakima during Baldwin’s 2011 rookie season with the Seahawks.
Kupp watched Seahawks games on local television every football weekend growing up in Yakima. He did the same in Cheney, while he was an overlooked wide receiver at Eastern Washington University. He broke Eags’ records and became the Walter Payton Award winner for the nation’s best college player at the Football Championship Subdivision.
“I was walking through the halls back here, it’s like, looking at these photos of iconic (plays), just moments in games, and being able to recognize, ‘Man, I remember where I was when that happened,’” Kupp, who turns 32 in June, said Tuesday inside the Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center.
“We were just talking down the hall, Doug Baldwin, one of the best counterbalance releases in history. It’s like little pieces of a game like that. Like, ‘Man, that’s something that I do!’ It’s watching Doug Baldwin do that stuff to guys, turn people around all the time.
“So that’s part of what is in my bag. It’s something that I carry with me. There’s guys that have come through this organization that have been impactful in ways they might not know about how I play the game.”
Kupp signed a three-year, free-agent contract earlier Tuesday. The Rams, the only NFL team he’s played for until now, last week released their 2021 NFL Offensive Player of the Year. That was when the former ninth-grader at Davis in Yakima who wanted to be a USC running back dominated the NFL with a league-leading 145 receptions, league-best 1,947 yards and NFL-topping 16 touchdowns.
Kupp agreed to his contract with his home-state team five days after the Seahawks traded two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver DK Metcalf to Pittsburgh. Kupp’s deal is worth a maximum of $45 million, an average maximum value of $15 million through the 2027 season with Seattle.
“Full-circle moment, coming back, being able to throw on a Seattle Seahawks jersey. That’s a really cool thing,” he said.
“That’s something that I don’t take lightly.
“Just really excited to be able to be a part of this program, what this program has been about, and continue to move it forward.”
Speaking a few feet in front of his wife Anna — they met when he was on the Davis High track team and she was competing for Richland High School — Kupp said he didn’t get a reason from the Rams why they released him.
“Not a ton of clarity in that regard,” Kupp said.
“It’s been difficult. In all honesty, it’s been very difficult and frustrating, and there’s been lots of questions. It’s a real tough situation. I’ve said, I’ve always imagined that I’d finish my career there. But that’s not what the plan was that God had for me and my family.
“Stepping into this new adventure, this new place, this new chapter in my career but also in our lives as my wife and I navigate moving back up home, back up to our home state, I think that’s something that we’re excited about facing. We’re excited about the community that we get to be a part of, the people that are going to be a part of our lives.
“But yeah, it has been difficult. Without a doubt, it has been difficult. And we’re humans. We’re real people. “
Injuries on top of cost were why L.A. released him. He’s missed 17 games the last three seasons since he signed a three-year, $80 million extension with the Rams following his breakout 2021.
The Rams see him as turning 32, expensive and recently hurt. Many see Kupp as fading.
But in this era where athletes seek every opportunity to put a chip of their shoulders for (often-manufactured) motivation, Kupp wants none of that.
“I’ve had people doubt me for a long time through my life,” he said. “In some ways, rightfully so. I was a very small kid growing up and cared a lot, but there’s a lot of people that care a lot and just don’t have the stuff to string together.
“But with all those doubts and all those things, it’s never been about proving other people wrong. I think I’ve lived in that space, and it never goes well. It’s been about being who I am, like, believing in myself and knowing that I can be who I see myself becoming. When I’ve taken that attitude, when I’ve taken that mindset, that’s always when I’ve been at my best. And I’ll continue that.”
Kupp said after eight NFL seasons, “I know how to navigate these waters. I’ve been here before.
“And it’s not about the negative energy,” he said. “It’s not about proving anyone else wrong, trying to make anyone else feel bad about anything.
“It’s just about being myself and being who I believe I can be and going out there and playing the game I love.”
Kupp thanked Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, general manager John Schneider plus his former Rams teammate Ernest Jones and Seattle wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. They all gave him the same, enthusiastic endorsement about the Seahawks as he was deciding where to sign as a free agent.
“I thought that the messaging from Mike and from John, from ‘Kubes’, from all the guys I talked to here, the messaging was right on par with what I thought was how you build a championship team. It’s about the people,” Kupp said. “You focus on bringing good people that are about ball, and all the other stuff is going to fall in place.
“That’s something that I was like, ‘Man, this is something that I know that that’s how you build a good team.’ I know the best teams I’ve been a part of have been built that way.
“So that excited me.”
So did what he called the “belief” that he feels from Seahawks leaders. He sees that as stemming from the Seahawks’ success of the last dozen years, including consecutive Super Bowls at the end of the 2013 and ‘14 seasons.
Kupp said doesn’t see these Seahawks, coming off a 10-7 season in 2024 despite not making the playoffs for the second consecutive year, as that far from contending for the Super Bowl.
He’ll be playing with, and mentoring, Smith-Njigba, with Tyler Lockett and traded DK Metcalf no longer in Seattle. Smith-Njigba, the team’s first-round draft choice in 2023, tied the recently released Lockett’s Seahawks record with 100 receptions this past season. Smith-Njigba primarily played the slot receiver, lining up inside in three- and four-wide-receiver formations in 2024.
In the slot is where Kupp became an All-Pro, a Super Bowl MVP and an $80 million man.
But the newest Seahawks sees no duplication in his and Smith-Njigba’s games with Seattle’s new quarterback Sam Darnold throwing to them in 2025.
“In eight years with the Rams, I think I was tagged with ‘the slot.’ But I don’t know how you determine that when we’re in condensed formations, I’m outside but I’m running a slot route,” Kupp said. “A lot of times I was outside, and I’m not sure if it was being tagged as a slot route or not.
“But the ability to move in an offense and the ability in this offense and what Kubiak has done is being able to formation guys to be anywhere. That’s how I had learned this offense originally was, that you’ve got to learn the whole thing because you could be in any one of these spots at any time.
“I think Jaxon did some of that same stuff last year where he played inside and outside and being able to run routes that are typically for an ‘X’ (split end on the line) or an ‘F’ (a receiver who runs double moves and deep routes) or a ‘Z’ (flanker off the line), being able to run all that stuff. I think that’s what we’ve got.
“We’ve got guys that are going to be willing to learn the offense as a whole there and be able to take advantage of those opportunities.”
He’ll do that with the team he grew up watching. Including in person. He attended a Seahawks game watching from the upper deck of Lumen Field 19 years ago, when he was 13.
“A snow game against the Packers, 2006,” Kupp said of Nov. 27, 2006, a Monday night in Seattle. “I was up in the very top, frozen as an icicle up there. But it was incredible watching. (Shaun) Alexander went off. It was crazy.
“I feel like I got to miss school the next day, so it was like bonus points because I didn’t have to go to school the next day.
“But yeah, memories. I have memories of being there, being part of that environment, and it’s such a cool thing. That was a special thing growing up, to be able to go to a Seahawks game. A very special memory.”
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