The Seattle Times
ATLANTA — To miss a Super Bowl because of an injury is bad enough. To have it happen in your first Super Bowl seems especially cruel.
In the case of Cooper Kupp, the standout slot receiver for the Los Angeles Rams, it’s hard to say whether the anguish this weekend will be greater for him or for his team.
Kupp, 25, entered his second season as one of the Rams’ top three wide receivers, alongside Brandin Cooks and Robert Woods, but in the team’s 5-0 start, he emerged as the one quarterback Jared Goff would look for when things got particularly difficult. Kupp, a star at Eastern Washington, earned that trust by catching 75 percent of the passes thrown his way and scoring five touchdowns in those five games.
But Sunday, as the Rams try to beat the New England Patriots and win the franchise’s first championship since the 1999 season, Kupp will be reduced to a spectator. A knee sprain cost him most of Weeks 6 through 8 and a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, which he suffered in Week 10, ended his season. Several high-profile players, like Carson Wentz and Von Miller, have found themselves in the same position in recent years, all feeling a deep sense of loss even as they tried to share their teammates’ joy.
Kupp, a third-generation NFL player — his grandfather, Jake, was a guard in the 1960s and 1970s, and his father, Craig, a backup quarterback in the early 1990s — has plenty of emotional support, and while he is staying away from the team’s official media appearances this week, he is with the Rams in Atlanta, which is not always a given for injured players.
While Los Angeles still has plenty of stars on offense, there is no getting around what the team lost when Kupp went down for the season.
The numbers are fairly stark. Goff had completed 68.4 percent of his passes through Week 10 and had a passer rating of 113. In the six regular-season games Goff played after Kupp’s injury, those numbers were reduced to 59.8 percent and 83.9.
Cooks and Woods remained viable threats, but the shuffling of roles created some disarray, and Josh Reynolds, who stepped in as the third receiver, could not match Kupp’s reliability. There was a sense that without Kupp, the Rams went from invincible to merely great.
Rams coach Sean McVay put things fairly bluntly to reporters shortly after Kupp’s injury.
“Anytime you lose a player of Cooper’s caliber and what he’s meant to our offense, you don’t replace guys like that,” McVay said.
But the Rams are in the Super Bowl anyway. Woods, who has largely assumed Kupp’s role in the offense, said he felt it was important for Kupp to be included in everything leading up the game because he is a big reason the team got this far. Woods has a fairly simple idea about how the Rams can make up for the frustration that Kupp undoubtedly feels: “We’ve got to get him a ring.”
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