Trailing by four points and with just five minutes left in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Field last Feb., the Rams faced a 4th and 1 on the Bengals’ 30-yard line and – with a championship pretty much on the line – decided to go for it.
Cooper Kupp then ran a jet sweep for a 7-yards to keep the drive alive and the rest is, well, history.
The play sparked the Rams’ go-ahead touchdown drive and helped cement Kupp as Super Bowl MVP. But, as the receiver told our Andy Nesbitt, the gutsy play call didn’t come without serious hesitation.
“It was definitely something that I think you in that moment, if you don’t get that, you turn the ball back over, back in Bengals territory, and that’s going to be a tough situation for us as a team to overcome,” said Kupp. “It’s a play that caused a lot of consternation as Sean would say, because there were a lot of moving parts going on.”
In fact, Kupp revealed that the now iconic play wasn’t executed cleanly until it was called by McVay with their Super Bowl chances on the line. They had some major issues with the play in the days leading up to the Super Bowl but still decided to go with it in such a crucial moment.
“We fumbled it like once or twice during the week, where we just weren’t getting the snap to hand off. We were having some issues with it,” said Kupp. “Going into it, Matthew [Stafford] and I talked. We came to Sean at the end of the week, and we’re like, ‘Hey, I know you want to call this play. Matthew and I have it figured out. We can get it done.’ And then, we didn’t even actually run it again until that moment there where we ran it on that fourth down.”
Amazing.
Here’s the conversation we had with Kupp about that play and about that intense moment:
Super Bowl LVI MVP @CooperKupp revealed how one iconic play from the Rams' game winning Super Bowl drive was a disaster at times during practice. pic.twitter.com/S02sJ6dlSd
— USA TODAY Sports (@usatodaysports) June 21, 2022
And here’s the play:
So much for ‘practice makes perfect’.
