As a senior in high school, the newest Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Cooper Kupp did not receive a single offer to play college football. Three weeks after graduating from high school, he did get a call from Eastern Washington University, so the small-school Eagles became his college team.
But Kupp had two things going for him that ultimately proved more important to his success as an athlete than any scholarship: a relentless drive to improve himself rooted in his love for the game, and an unusually highly developed talent for building chemistry with the people he worked with. He’d done it all his life. Unrecruited, he became the best receiver who ever played in the FCS (Football Championship Subdivision). Drafted by the Rams, he was the seventh receiver chosen. The NFL’s draft site included this assessment of his talent: “Good backup who could become a starter.”
In Los Angeles, Kupp joined a talent-packed team and made a solid contribution from the start. The team did well, but when quarterback Jared Goff fell out of favor with coach Sean McVay in 2020, space was opened up for a new quarterback.
Enter Matthew Stafford.
In one important respect, Stafford was Kupp’s opposite: he played college football at Georgia, where he was a first-team All-American, and was selected first overall by the Detroit Lions in 2009. In other words, unlike the late-blooming Kupp, Stafford exemplified the bluest of blue-chip players. While he achieved distinction in Detroit — becoming in 2012 the fourth player ever to throw 5,000 yards in a single season — by 2020 he wanted out of a city where he had established close ties with the fans but felt he would never get his shot at a championship.
The golden boy who had been toiling in obscurity wanted one chance to grab a piece of the limelight.
In March of 2021, he got his wish and joined the Rams. In training camp, the ugly duckling and the golden swan immediately took to each other, and the natural bond between quarterback and receiver grew stronger as the pair began meeting for their “breakfast club” to grab a bite, get a jump on the day, review film and talk about all things football.
“You only get so many reps in practice, so the time you get to talk football in the periods between when you’re out there on the field are some of the most valuable times,” observed Kupp. Those investments paid dividends.
Kupp became the man for whom Stafford looked over and over again all season long when he had to have a play. And Kupp snatched everything thrown his way, ultimately leading the NFL in catches, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns for the wide receiver “Triple Crown.” As a result, he was named the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year. How ironic: the player no one valued out of high school became just the second player in NFL history to win Offensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl MVP in the same year (Joe Montana did it in 1989). He’s also the second player in league history (Jerry Rice) to win the receiving triple crown, Offensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl MVP in their career. Yes, that “good backup” is the only one to accomplish all of that in just one season
In the Super Bowl, Kupp hauled in eight passes for 92 yards and two touchdowns. Four of those catches, 39 of those yards and one of those touchdowns came on the 15-play, fourth-quarter drive that turned a 20-16 Cincinnati lead into a 23-20 Rams victory. The Stafford-Kupp connection was all the more dramatically important after the Rams’ other superstar wide receiver, Odell Beckham, Jr., injured his knee in the second quarter.
It's a truism in the world of sports that fans who have developed a special affection for a particular athlete will continue to root for him or her even after the athlete has gone on to another team. The bond between fans and athlete can be based on different things. In some cases, it is the shared joy of a winning tradition and continued excellence that forges the bond. (Read: Tom Brady’s continued popularity in Tampa Bay among proud New Englanders.)
In other cases, the bond is more personal and rooted in a chemistry between player and fans who have fought and supported each other through thick and thin. That was the kind of bond Stafford retained with many from Detroit.
That’s the thing about chemistry, whether between players or between players and fans. It is developed when nobody is watching. And it flourishes when the chips are down, and the only thing separating one great team from another great team is a partnership forged at 6 a.m. over breakfast and the words, “Man, let’s do something special this year.”
