Before Cooper Kupp, there was Jake Kupp.
“When I was in the fifth grade, I was dreaming of being a baseball player,” Jake told Serby Says. “We didn’t have any major league teams in the state of Washington. But I loved the New York Yankees. We had a peach tree out in front of our yard, and in the summertime on a hot day I’d go out and lay underneath that peach tree and just dream what it was gonna be like to be a New York Yankee.”
Jake Kupp, a kid from Sunnyside, Wa., wound up being drafted as a tight end in the ninth round in 1964 NFl Draft by the Tom Landry Cowboys before they moved him to guard.
“He probably was the brightest, smartest coach that I played with in my career,” Jake said. “He was really fun to play for.”
It wasn’t always fun.
“I weighed 229 pounds as an offensive guard, and the first guy that I ever played against was [Giants defensive tackle] Roosevelt Grier at 314 pounds,” he said. “I learned how to cut block real fast.”
He played two years there, then one season as a tight end in Washington under Otto Graham before being selected in the 1967 expansion draft by the Saints.
The Saints made Archie Manning the second-overall pick of the 1971 draft.
“[Then-coach] J.D. Roberts wanted somebody that was mature and in the league for a while to be his roommate,” Jake said, and then chuckled. “And I think it was quite the opposite. Archie was probably a lot more mature than I was at 31, and he was 21.”
He played until 1975 and was inducted into the Saints Hall of Fame and named to the franchise’s 25th, 40th and 50th anniversary teams.
Before Cooper Kupp, there was Jake Kupp’s son Craig, a kid from Saleh, Wa., born in 1967.
“I was in third grade when my dad retired with the Saints,” Craig said. “People would ask me what I was going to be when I grew up. I was going to play pro football.”
As a 6-foot-5 quarterback.
“He would go out in the backyard and punt to himself for hours and hours,” Jake recalled.
Craig was a late bloomer and bounced from Montana Tech to Yakima CC to Pacific Lutheran.
“Archie Manning was my favorite quarterback when I was a little kid,” Craig said. “I loved his ability to run and throw.”
The Giants drafted him in the fifth round of the 1990 draft.
“I had a pretty good arm,” Craig said. “I could put it on a line. I threw a really nice deep ball.”
But he was a project. Bill Parcells was looking for a developmental quarterback behind Phil Simms and Jeff Hostetler. He spared no one.
“I remember one time I was warming up and he goes, ‘Craig, your key is you need to block out 95 percent of the stuff I tell you, and you’re going to be just fine,’” Craig said.
And when he threw an interception one day in practice and made no attempt to make the tackle?
“I had to run laps around the practice field the rest of that practice before I could rejoin the team,” Craig said.
He praises Simms for helping him and recalls seeing Lawrence Taylor in the locker room after he had ended his summer holdout.
“I remember sitting at my locker facing out away from my locker, and I could just tell something in the room had changed,” Craig said. “Something was different. And I looked over my left shoulder, Lawrence Taylor had just walked in the room. He commanded a presence.”
Parcells decided to bring in the more experienced Matt Cavanaugh and encouraged Craig when he was released. He wound up with the Phoenix Cardinals, and played in one NFL game (3-for-7, 23 yards) in 1991.
“I think back things I could have done differently, and decisions that I made, and things that I should have worked on instead of working on other things, I got those kind of questions,” Craig said, “but it does give me an appreciation for what it takes at the pro level, which makes it even more special to see what Cooper’s doing.”
After Jake Kupp and Craig Kupp, there is Cooper Kupp.
“When he was a freshman in high school, he was really super skinny and small,” Craig said. “He was stretching for a first down, he reached the ball out and the pile landed on his shoulder, broke his shoulder. But it was at that point where I think he decided that he’s gonna really get after it and get in the weight room and transform his body.”
There were doubters nevertheless on Cooper’s journey to Eastern Washington, and eventually the Rams.
“He had aspirations to play at USC when he was younger and Stanford, and he had people tell him, ‘You need to just forget that and you need to set your sights much smaller,’ ” Craig said. “It kind of makes me mad when people do that kind of stuff. They think they’re helping, but it just kind of puts caps on kids’ dreams, and that’s not the way we operate in our family. But I think it did serve a purpose.”
It sure did. And now Cooper (1,489 receiving yards) is threatening Calvin “Megatron” Johnson’s all-time single-season receptions record (1,964) from 2012.
Cooper also leads all receivers with 113 catches and 12 touchdowns.
“I’ve operated out of a space where I don’t think there was a whole lot of room for self-doubt, not believing in where I can get to and what I wanted to achieve,” Cooper told Serby Says. “That’s not to say there’s not struggles on the other side of things, just the battles that anyone goes through with your self-esteem as you go through those things where you’re undersized, you’re slower than everyone, you’re smaller than everyone, as a person feeling like maybe you’re less than or not as good as the guys around you, but the belief in where I get to, I’ve never doubted that side of things.”
When you ask Cooper what anyone interested in building the perfect receiver should take from him, he says:
“The thing that comes to mind is a relentless pursuit to improve.”
Father knows best.
“Whatever he does he wants to do it up the best of his ability, it’s just kind of the way he’s made up,” Craig said. “He really feels like he was born to play football. Just feels like God made him that way and that’s kind of his purpose, at least for now. His whole mentality is: ‘I want to get better every day, even if it’s a millimeter.’ ”
Grandfather knows best too.
“I think it’s his intelligence that really makes him the player that he is,” Jake said.
Good has never been good enough for Cooper Kupp.
“I’m a one-track mind: Once I start something, I have to finish it,” he said. “I gotta go all the way through. It drives my wife crazy because I can tune out anything. Whatever it is I’m focused on, I won’t hear anything, I’m just focused on what I need to get done. It becomes a problem sometimes. I’ve been that way from as early as I can remember.”
Is there another level for him to reach?
“Without a doubt there is,” Cooper said, “because I will never in my life — if I ever say that I’ve arrived or that we’ve arrived as an offense, that we’ve reached the pinnacle, we’ve reached the best that we can be, that’s the day you lose, and that’s the day you walk away from the game. There’s always something to strive for, to push for, and we live that day in and day out.”
His father is 54.
“It’s really been fun,” Craig said. “And it’s rewarding as a dad to see your son put in so much work, be so committed to his craft, and then to be able to continually get better and better and better. It makes a dad pretty proud.”
His grandfather is 80.
“It’s almost like a gift being able to follow my son in his career, and then being able to follow my grandson,” Jake said.
Cooper is 28.
“Growing up, my dad was always just my dad,” he says. “He didn’t talk a lot about his playing days. Part of that comes from just a little bit of his own regrets and how that played out and what he could have done better. But also I think he just wanted to be a dad. He didn’t want anything else going along with it, he just wanted to be there for me. I was the one that chose football. He never pushed me into any sports or anything like that.”
Cooper (114.5-yards per game average) needs to average 119 yards a game to break Megatron’s record.
Says Craig Kupp: “I wouldn’t bet against Cooper.”
