Cooper Kupp’s return to his home state proved to be a storybook reunion. The former Offensive Player of the Year had a fantastic postseason for the Seattle Seahawks, catching 15 passes for 157 yards and a touchdown over three games. Technically speaking, his TD against the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship win was the winning score, a poetic result given the messy exit from his old team.
With the New England Patriots keyed in on stopping Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Kupp stepped up as the Seahawks’
leading receiver, hauling in a team-high six passes for 61 yards. It might not have been the Super Bowl MVP performance he had with the Rams against the Cincinnati Bengals, but he was still an important piece of the passing offense.
Kupp also made a bit of history along the way. Through some extensive research on Stathead, I perused the Super Bowl box scores to determine the leading receiver (by yards) in all 60 editions of the big game. While there have been multiple players who’ve led their team in receiving yards in Super Bowl wins (notably Travis Kelce and Jerry Rice), no one has done it like the former Eastern Washington star.
Cooper Kupp is the first player in NFL history to be the Super Bowl single-game receiving yards leader for two different franchises.
Every Super Bowl single-game leading receiver
Kupp joins Paul Warfield, Lynn Swann, Cliff Branch, Jerry Rice, Michael Irvin, Deion Branch, Julian Edelman, and Travis Kelce on the list of players who’ve had a team-high in receiving yards at least twice in a Super Bowl win.
What a postseason from Kupp, what a performance in the Super Bowl—don’t forget it was his 3rd and 9 conversion that led to the A.J. Barner touchdown—and what a story for the Yakima native to return to Washington and win it all with the team he grew up rooting for.
