Super idea: Kupp took Jones’ advice to join Seahawks

Published 9:30 am Thursday, January 29, 2026

Cooper Kupp and Ernest Jones had celebrated on the field with their children. They had tossed the green confetti off Lumen Field into their kids hair and faces.

Kupp had shared moments on the field with his father Craig, a former Pacific Lutheran University quarterback; he is a PLU Athletics Hall of Fame member along with his wife and Cooper’s mom, Karin.

Cooper Kupp and Jones had smoked cigars inside a locker room filled with bass, smoke and joy. They’d changed out of their Seahawks uniforms. They’d completed their postgame press conferences, explained how marvelous this all was.

Now they were home with their wives, both NFC champions again. Kupp and Jones were heading to the Super Bowl as teammates again, four years after they’d been that together with the team they’d just beaten hours earlier.

In that first bit of calm Sunday night after Seahawks 31, Rams 27 in the raucous, tense NFC championship game, Jones texted Kupp.

The 26-year-old middle linebacker on Seattle’s top-ranked defense texted to the 32-year-old wide receiver the message Jones had sent to Kupp last March. It was Jones’ response to Kupp asking his former Rams teammate what it was like to play for the Seahawks.

The Los Angeles Rams, the only NFL team Kupp had known, for whom he became the league’s best offensive player and the Super Bowl MVP, had just ditched him. After eight years with them, the Rams saw his recent seasons limited by injuries and got out of his three-year, $80 million contract extension. They’d given him that months after he and L.A. won the Super Bowl in Feb. 2022.

This past March, the Rams were urging the 31-year-old Kupp to retire, according to The Athletic’s Mike Silver in a story this week.

Kupp, a star at A.C. Davis High School in Yakima, back when he met his future wife Anna at a track meet, wasn’t retiring. He was looking for a new job. A new team. A new life for him, Anna and their three young boys, Cooper, Cypress and Solas.

Silver reported the Rams led Kupp to believe they were warning other teams to not pay him much more than a non-guaranteed deal just above the league’s veteran minimum pay.

Kupp shopped. He asked Jones about the Seahawks last March.

“We’re on the cusp of competing for a Super Bowl,” Jones texted back to Kupp 10 months ago. “We’re right there.”

Late Sunday night, Jones texted Kupp again.

“I told you, right there!” Jones wrote, hours after they won the NFC title game as Seahawks.

Kupp said he and his wife talked recently about how the teams in this month’s playoffs were many of the teams they were deciding whether to sign with in free agency last spring.

“And it’s crazy, because my wife and I talked about the playoff picture, in general,” Kupp said this week. “There was a lot of teams that are in the playoff picture, teams that we had talked to in some capacity or been like, ‘Man, these were teams we thought maybe we would be with in that process.’”

But he listened to Jones. He signed with Seattle, to come home on a three-year deal worth up to $45 million.

“Really cool to be a part of this one and be able to build what this has become here,” Kupp said this week.

“Yeah, it’s just been an incredible blessing.”

Not the season Cooper Kupp envisioned, personally

Kupp was the NFL offensive player of the year with 145 catches and 16 touchdowns four seasons ago with the Rams. That 2021 season, he became the second player in the Super Bowl era (since 1967) with at least 1,000 yards receiving and 10 touchdowns in the first nine games of a season.

The only other player to achieve that: Jerry Rice.

This season, his first with the Seahawks, Kupp watched Jaxon Smith-Njigba become him from 2021. Smith-Njigba led the NFL with 1,793 receiving yards. Last week, the Pro Football Writers Association named him the league’s offensive player of the year. He could win the same award next week at the NFL Honors show at the Super Bowl.

Smith-Njigba had 119 catches in the regular season, on 163 targets. He had 10 touchdown catches. His 35.8% of all targets on passes by Seattle’s quarterbacks, almost all by Sam Darnold, were the most in the NFL.

Kupp had just 47 receptions and two scores in his first Seahawks regular season. He had just 70 targets. The catches and targets were each the second-fewest of his career, second only to his 2018 season when he played in only eight games for the Rams and went on injured reserve.

Kupp had just 16.2% of Seattle’s passing targets. That was 58th in the league, per Sumer Sports.

That was not what he had in mind in March when he listened to Jones and signed to play for the Seahawks he rooted for as a kid.

“Look,” Kupp said last week, “at the end of the day, I’m going to go out there and execute what’s asked of me. As anyone would. Everyone wants to come in here and have 1,500 yards in a year, score 10 touchdowns. You want the ball in your hands. But ultimately, my job is to do what that play call says to do and to execute it to the best of my possible ability. And I take a lot of pride in that and being an asset for the coaches and being a tool.

“When I’m sitting in these chairs with these guys, being someone that the coaches want to get something done, whether the pass game, the run game, screen, whatever it is, being able to execute your job.”

Yet Kupp isn’t about to complain about that job. Not with he and his Seahawks going to the Super Bowl.

“So, no, I would say, no, it hasn’t gone (as I expected with my) production, what like everyone comes in and hopes that it’s going to be,” he said. “But it has been just for the success that we have had and what we’ve been able to do here. That has been the vision.

“And so I’ve been ecstatic to be a part of it, to come in here every single day and be a part of working towards that goal. It’s been exactly what I’ve wanted it to be.”

Last week, it was his production that ensured the Seahawks made the Super Bowl.

Cooper Kupp in the clutch

Sunday night, after talking on the field at length with his former Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford and his L.A. receiver Puka Nacua before the game, Kupp reminded all what he still is for Seattle.

He said he was “about third or fourth” among the receiving options on Darnold’s pivotal touchdown pass to him late in the third quarter. Kupp curled inside behind Smith-Njigba’s crossing route on third and 3. After his catch at the 6, Kupp leaned into his run to the goal line. He bulled through two converging Rams trying to tackle him to score his first touchdown for Seattle in a Lumen Field home game.

It gave the Seahawks a 31-20 lead. Those proved to be the decisive points. Kupp said he had “no idea” that pass was coming to him.

His coach thought it was the coolest score.

“How about that? ‘Coop’ against his former team, NFC Championship, gets a touchdown,” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said.

“(There were) some whispers before the game, like, ‘How cool would it be if ‘Coop’ scored a touchdown today?’ And he did.

“I mean, we love him. He’s the best.”

Then, with 3:20 left and Seattle holding on to a 31-27 lead, on third and 7 from the Seattle 28, Kupp clinched the win.

He took Darnold’s pass a few yards short of the line to gain. Then he did what he later called a “Cardinal sin,” twisting through a tackler and sticking the ball out at the line to gain for the crucial first down.

“Yeah, you never reach on third down. Fourth down, end of game, last play of the game where it’s fourth down, that’s where you can reach,” Kupp said. “On third down, it’s because of that. Like, if it was close and you get tackled and you’re short you have an opportunity to go for it still. You reach for it on third down, fumble, that opportunity is gone now.”

In fact, the ball did come out — after Kupp hit the ground, tackled. He said he wasn’t sure he had reached the line to gain before he was down. But he didn’t look at Sean McVay, his former coach with the Rams, at the L.A. sideline to see if he was going to risk one of his two remaining timeouts to challenge the ruling.

McVay didn’t. First down Seattle.

L.A. had to use its remaining timeouts on defense. The Seahawks kept the ball until just 25 seconds remained for the win.

If Kupp doesn’t fight for the first down there, the Rams’ rolling offense that gained 479 yards Sunday night gets the ball back likely near midfield with 3 minutes and two timeouts left.

And L.A. likely would be in the Super Bowl instead of Seattle.

“Just for him to just be able to step up on a day-to-day basis for us, not only in games but in practice, in the facility, he’s a true leader for us,” Darnold said.

So he’s done it. Kupp, and Jones, have fulfilled the goal Jones told his friend back in March these Seahawks were on close to achieving.

“I’m most happy for ‘Coop,’” Jones said Sunday night, smoking a celebration cigar. “I’ve been in that position. I’ve been there. I’ve left that place. I know everything he went through.

“I know this feels good for him and I’m happy we were able to do it.”

Make that: They’ve almost fulfilled the goal.

“I still don’t really have words for it. It’s been an incredible journey,” Kupp said. “Just to see the excitement around here, being a part of this team, this organization, seeing the excitement there is just around Seattle, how many people are bought in on what we’ve created in this building and how it’s just permeated out, it’s really cool. Really cool to be a part of.

“Looking forward to going out there in a couple weeks and the opportunity to seal the deal.”