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. But Kupp had something going for him that ultimately proved more important to his success as an athlete than any scholarship: a relentless drive to improve.
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.
