Everybody knows the feeling of liking something before it breaks out into the mainstream, the sweet satisfaction of recognizing quality before everyone else in the world stamps their opinion on it. It could be a band, a song, a local restaurant, anything. Around the Big Sky Conference this year, it’s been a 6-foot-2 wide receiver from Yakima, Washington.
Five years before Cooper Kupp led the Los Angeles Rams into the Super Bowl, five years before he ended Tom Brady’s career in under a minute, half a decade before Kupp was named the Offensive Player of the Year, and had every outlet from coast to coast writing about everything from his wife to his technique, everybody in the Big Sky knew he was the real deal. As a redshirt freshman at Eastern Washington in 2013, Kupp had 93 catches and 21 touchdowns. His worst season in four years was 104 catches for 1,431 yards and 16 touchdowns. By the time he finished, he was the all-time FCS leader in career receptions, yards and touchdowns.
Before Kupp takes the field in the Super Bowl on Sunday, Skyline Sports talked to multiple former and current Big Sky and FCS coaches who schemed to stop one of the greatest college receivers of all time. They told stories of sleepless nights, impossible plays and unstoppable offense.
“You brought up some bad nightmares,” former Northern Arizona defensive coordinator Andy Thompson said when reached for this piece. Welcome to the horror show.
“People will define success under their own terms but if you can walk off the field on your very last play and say, ‘I did the best I possibly could on every single snap every single day from the moment I set foot at Eastern until the moment I stepped off the field’, that’s a success,” Kupp said in July of 2016. “Anything past that is out of my control.”
COOPER KUPP COLLEGE STATS
| Season | Team | GP | Receptions | R/G | Yards | Y/G | Avg | Long | TD |
| 2013 | Eastern Washington | 15 | 93 | 6.2 | 1,691 | 112.7 | 18.2 | 62 | 21 |
| 2014 | EWU | 13 | 104 | 8.0 | 1,431 | 110.1 | 13.8 | 61 | 16 |
| 2015 | EWU | 11 | 114 | 10.4 | 1,642 | 149.3 | 14.4 | 78 | 19 |
| 2016 | EWU | 13 | 117 | 9.0 | 1,700 | 130.7 | 14.5 | 75 | 17 |
| Total | 52 | 428 | 8.4 | 6,464 | 125.7 | 14.9 | 78 | 73 |
Malik Roberson (Then: Portland State defensive coordinator; now: Ferris HS (WA) head coach): I recruited Cooper Kupp while I was at Portland State. He didn’t have a lot going on coming out of high school. Towards the signing date he picked up like, two offers, I believe. I couldn’t get my offensive staff to offer him at Portland State. The quote was, we can find him in Portland, and I was just thinking to myself, well, I haven’t seen anybody with a 45-minute highlight tape at receiver. … It was great recruiting him, you know, he’s a phenomenal player.
Roger Cooper (Then: Idaho State defensive coordinator; now: between jobs): We recruited his brother, the linebacker (Ketner Kupp). We thought we had a shot at him but he went to Eastern Washington as well. But I didn’t really hear much about (Cooper Kupp) until he got to Eastern Washington and started terrorizing the Big Sky.
Jason Semore (Then: Montana defensive coordinator; now: Georgia Tech secondary coach): Talent isn’t what makes Cooper Kupp special. What makes Cooper Kupp special is all the intangible qualities that he brings as a player. … He has a really high understanding for the game of football. I remember thinking to myself, this guy understands defensive football. Not just simple things like sitting down in zones. He knows what defenders are trying to do to him. Getting open and then the dominant trait that he has is his ball skills. When you know how to get open and how to attack defenses and you never drop balls, you have a pretty good chance of being an elite receiver.
“Cooper will be the first to tell you that a lot of people didn’t think he was going to play here. Coach Adams is the one who said he couldn’t play here,” former EWU wide receiver Shaq Hill said. “That chip will never be off his shoulder.”
Jerome Souers (Then: Northern Arizona head coach; now: Montana State-Northern head coach): A lot of times your talented guys aren’t your hardest-working guys. He was the hardest-working guy, and developed his talent and skill and ability. He brought it every week. I don’t know if there was a guy that was better-prepared. He understood what he was going against.
Roberson: (Former Eastern Washington head coach Beau) Baldwin was the offensive coordinator there when I was an assistant coach there under Paul Wolff. So we have that connection. When I would come back and roll through Spokane for recruiting, I would stop and say hi to the coaches and stop at the university. I remember one time I came through, it was fairly early in the morning, and (Kupp) was there all by himself in the coaches’ office watching film. It was probably about 7 a.m., nobody was there except him.
Cooper: He’s really smart and he’s a great route runner, but once the ball’s in his hand, no one can tackle him either. He has this lethal combo of twitch and ability to break tackles and really make people look bad, and he understands leverages and understands coverages. It’s an art what he does.
Souers: We knew he was going to get his catches, it was more an approach of managing him, keeping him contained from having huge plays. Always having an eye on him, a man free to double him. In zone, everybody had eyes on where he was going to be.
Kupp was a four-time first-team All-Big Sky and first-team All-American selection during his career at EWU. He was a two-time Big Sky Player of the Year and won the Walter Payton Award as a junior.
Andy Thompson (Then: Northern Arizona defensive coordinator; now: Sacramento State defensive coordinator): Just so reliable, he was such a good route runner, but he caught the ball in his hands. You try to jam him or put somebody over the top of him, he’d still be able to run an option route and then they just did a really good job of moving him around. He wasn’t in one spot so it made it really difficult to set up things against him.
Cooper: I just remember trying to bracket coverage him with two of our better guys, either high and low or in and out based on down and distance. On third downs we were bracketing him and he’s catching balls on us, and I’m just watching our DBs out there, absolutely, at this point, at a loss for words just because I don’t know how many more guys you can put on a guy.
Roberson: In 2015, we had to invent a coverage just for him, know where he was at, make sure we had him doubled. He still scored a touchdown on us and had a real good game, but a good game was holding him in check. He still had 100 yards receiving, but that was good defensively. Then next year, 2016, the Kendrick Bourne and Shaq year, that was an absolute nightmare.
A year before Kupp came to campus, Eastern Washington recruited Shaq Hill. A year after, the Eagles brought in Kendrick Bourne. All three finished their careers in 2016. Kupp finished that year with 117 catches for 1,700 yards and 17 touchdowns. Bourne had 79 for 1,201 and seven scores, Hill 77 for 1,157 and 17. All three got shots at the NFL. Kupp and Bourne are still playing in the league.
Thompson: (Kendrick Bourne) was long, really fluid and really fast. He did a really good job of catching a screen and taking it the distance or running by you with a double move. They would always run a lot of slant-and-goes or hitch-and-goes with him, and he was just so explosive.
Roberson: We had two NFL corners that year. … Xavier Coleman and Chris Seisay, and they both went to the NFL that year. But Kendrick was too much for Chris that year. And then, you know, they put Cooper and Shaq at the slot and it was just like, this ain’t fair.
Jeremiah Johnson (Then: Northern Iowa defensive coordinator; now: Kent State defensive coordinator): We still played bracket against Eastern Washington in ‘16 and I think Kendrick Bourne caught like eight slants and the safety couldn’t get involved. We were doubling him on anything that was vertical. We just had a hard time getting the safety down tight enough to help on the slant, and Bourne was winning off the line against our corner.
Thompson: The biggest thing is they were so balanced on both sides of the field. Kendrick Bourne was so fast and he would play to the boundary and then they put Cooper Kupp in the slot. So if you tried to play man-to-man, it was going to be a really tough matchup with Kendrick Bourne and if you tried to play zone you were going to give 10 yards away, at least, with Cooper Kupp. And then Shaq Hill was running the fly sweep. It was really tough.
Cooper: It was like Tecmo Bowl out there. Young kids don’t know what that is, but it was just insane the amount of talent. We would always tell our kids, there’s only one ball and that’s a good thing. Just do your job and compete when the ball comes in your area.
“He’s going to be the greatest receivers to ever play college football. If he keeps going, you won’t be able to deny it,” Nick Ewards, the former EWU and Cal wide receiver coach who is now on Beau Baldwin’s staff at Cal Poly.
“Hopefully he stays healthy, but I know he will because he takes care of his body. His legacy will be up there for college football. The sky is the limit for the kid’s legacy. If they did statues, he would have a statue out front the stadium in Cheney.”
Semore: With Eastern Washington it’s almost like you have to make a decision as a defensive coach. OK, Cooper Kupp’s going to get his touches and his catches, I’m not going to let anybody else beat me. You can go that route. You can go the route of, I’m going to do everything that I can to take away Cooper Kupp and make the other guys beat me. I think it’s a lose-lose to try to take Cooper Kupp out of the game because Kendrick Bourne is so good. It’s a mistake to let Cooper Kupp get his catches and take everybody else away because he’ll have five touchdowns. So what we tried to do was take it out of those two dudes’ hands and really attack their offensive line. We tried to sack their quarterback.
Roberson: In 2016, we took a bus from Sac State and got back on Monday morning and had to play them guys (Eastern Washington) on ESPN on Thursday night. I didn’t get any sleep that week, and neither did our defensive staff because we had to make sure we had all of our bases covered. We did a good job getting to the quarterback, it was just a matter of time before they created a matchup that we just didn’t have an answer for. It’s pick your poison. It’s Cooper Kupp or it’s Shaq or it’s freaking Kendrick, and so they finally found something that we didn’t have an answer for and that’s how they won the game.
Johnson: It was crazy because you didn’t have enough guys to match up against both of them. A lot of people would say well, just match your corners up. Well, they move those guys around enough that it would have been confusing to just let a guy chase him all over the field. They did a good job with them, and those kids were both elite. Like I mean, they were damn good.
Thompson: You just tried to give them something they hadn’t seen. So many people were trying to drop eight against them, so we tried to bring a little pressure and hope that they would screw it up and throw it. It worked all right on third down but then they’d go for it on fourth down. Cooper Kupp, the day we played them, he had two or three unbelievable catches on fourth down and like seven or eight. We would go, geez, there goes the drive, they’re still going.
Semore: We were playing Eastern at Eastern. We had our safety over the top and a nickel playing outside leverage and a defensive end dropping to wherever Cooper Kupp was. A first-level inside defender, a man-to-man presence on his outside leverage and then vertical help right over the top. It was third down and 12 or something. We blitzed them and he just, no fancy double move, just took an inside release and ran down the seam as fast as he could. The quarterback threw it up to him and he made this ridiculous catch, kept his balance and ran for a touchdown. That’s a helpless feeling as a defensive coordinator because you’re like, geez, I made the call that’s designed specifically to stop that play and they just ran that play and scored a touchdown.
Johnson: He made a catch against us, I remember in ‘15, that was one-handed for probably 25 yards. And I was like, How in the hell did he catch that?
“For those old enough to remember, and I’ve been saying this for years, he is the next (former Seattle Seahawks standout) Steve Largent,” Idaho State head coach Mike Kramer, the only Big Sky coach to offer Kupp a full scholarships. “He’s deceptive and crafty and competitive but instead of 5-foot-10, he’s 6-2.”
Cooper: On our empty check, we always had the Mike (linebacker) on the No. 3 receiver inside. Basically he has that receiver in man coverage, and they figured it out. I just told the Mike linebacker, if a team ever figures it out and puts a skilled receiver at No. 3, just start running. Just start running down the middle of the field. Mitch Beckstead was his name, and he pointed up at me in the box and I just remember screaming, Run, Mitch, run! So Mitch Beckstead takes off. Cooper Kupp runs a normal route, bends it back inside. The quarterback threw it up and I’m like, oh, that’s going over his head. And then (Kupp) sticks out his hand, like, sticks out one hand in the back of the end zone and catches it for like a 47-yard touchdown. I just remember thinking, this guy’s got to graduate. He’s got to get out of here. Enough’s enough.
Thompson: It was the best group that I had seen and gone against for sure. They had gone to Washington State and beaten Washington State, scored 45 points on them. And Washington State was thought to be a pretty good team and they ended up winning quite a few games. And then they went to North Dakota State, I think they scored 44 points and they were just going up and down the field. No one has gone into North Dakota State and done that.
Souers: That was a nightmare. Every time we went against them, it was a nightmare. So, if you got a win against those guys, that was a great win. I was proud of our guys every time we played them, we competed our tails off, but man, they were good.
Kupp’s ridiculous college success put him on the NFL radar. The Rams picked him in the third round of the 2017 draft. He had 869 yards as a rookie that year, and has never had fewer than that in a full NFL season. In 2021, he led the NFL with 145 catches, 1,947 yards and 16 touchdowns, becoming only the fourth player ever to lead the league in all three categories.
Roberson: I won’t say any names, but I was talking to a particular scout. This was after Cooper’s senior year, and I said, Hey, where is this guy going to go? He said, you know, he won’t go any earlier than the fourth, he doesn’t have that mojo when you work him out and test him. I thought to myself, that’s crazy. … It is what it is, but in the back of your mind, you’re like, OK, watch. Wait. He’s just done the same thing in the NFL that he’s done in college. When you’re talking somebody who eats, sleeps and breathes football, he exemplifies that to a tee.
Thompson: I don’t know anything about where guys are drafted and I don’t get to watch all the NFL talent. I just knew he was the best guy that we had faced in my time as a coach there as far as a complete player, had done it for four years, stayed healthy, had different quarterbacks. He was Mr. Consistent.
Semore: He’s mastered the process of working on his craft and adapting to the game. There’s no doubt that he loves ball. He has the intangible things that you want in any player, so he’s probably just going to continue to get better. This is probably just the beginning of a Jerry Rice-type career for Cooper Kupp.
Roberson: I have to root for the Rams, just that connection I have with Cooper.
Semore: Obviously the Big Sky ties that I have, and the history that I have with Cooper Kupp and stuff like that, I’m definitely rooting for the Rams.
Cooper: I don’t really have a team, but I’m rooting for him individually for sure. I’m a big fan. We bracketed him, we did everything we could, and he’s just a different cat.
“Records are meant to be broken, Week in and week out, records are broken and names fall. Slowly, the guy who set the record, 100 years from now, he might be 20th on the list. Records are meant to be broken and records don’t confirm anyone’s legacy. To me, your legacy is defined by your relationship with people.
Cooper Kupp in 2016
