Cooper Kupp probably won’t win the NFL’s regular season MVP award. Wide receivers rarely do.
But wide receivers rarely have the kind of outsized impact Kupp’s capable of having on a game. One week after hauling in a 44-yard catch to avert disaster against the defending champions, the fourth-year wideout played the best game of his career to lead the Los Angeles Rams to a comeback win over the San Francisco 49ers 20-17 and a place in Super Bowl 56.
Kupp shined on a day where his quarterback Matthew Stafford struggled to hit targets downfield. Only one of Kupp’s 14 targets came more than 15 yards past the line of scrimmage, but he still managed to turn 11 catches into 142 yards (67 of which came after snatching the ball), two touchdowns and, just as importantly, six conversions on third down.
None may have been more important than the third-and-3 slant that beat K’Waun Williams at the line of scrimmage and set up what turned out to be a game-winning field goal for Matthew Gay three plays later.
Kupp was the balm for a burned quarterback who appeared to be playing tired or possibly as the game went on. Stafford was pinpoint with his passes near the line of scrimmage, but his field-stretching deep ball capabilities waned and he went just two-for-seven on throws of 20+ yards. None was more troubling than this should’ve-been interception from Jacquiski Tartt that wound up costing the Niners three points in a 20-17 game.
all Tartt had to do was fair catch this arm punt annnnnnnd nope pic.twitter.com/9msYxsig1A
— Christian D'Andrea, 2021 PAC champion (@TrainIsland) January 31, 2022
But Kupp wasn’t the only hero who raised Stafford’s game en route to the Super Bowl. Odell Beckham had his first 100-yard game since October 2019 and was responsible for both Stafford’s deep completions. Kendall Blanton, the team’s third-string tight end and a man with four career NFL receptions in three seasons, caught all five of his targets for 57 crucial yards and three first downs.
Stafford finished his day with 14.2 total expected points added. Kupp, Beckham, and Blanton combined for 23.4 expected points added between them as receivers, per the NextGenStats model provided by RBSDM.com.
The best way to beat the Niners was by attacking their beleaguered secondary. On a day where the run game was responsible for -10 expected points, that’s exactly what happened. Some of that was because of Stafford’s composure — he stood in the pocket, took hits both legitimate and not, and mostly got the ball where it needed to be.
Still, the bulk of this success can be chalked up to the stellar play of a group of wideouts who took small windows and turned them into scoring opportunities. That’s something that’s going to be a problem for the Cincinnati Bengals and a good, but not great, group of defensive backs.
Of course, it helped that Stafford’s fade was lost in the shadows of a total Jimmy Garoppolo eclipse late. The embattled 49er quarterback struggled with the Rams’ pass rush in his face, rehashing the RL Stine-caliber short story “Jimmy G rolls out under pressure before throwing” on the Niners fans who’d made the trip down to LA. The cracks showed throughout the second half, particularly in the fourth quarter drive after Matt Gay tied the game at 17-all:
The dam burst one drive later trailing 20-17. First came the no-chance screen pass that lost three yards and kept the clock running. Then came, uh, whatever the hell this was:
Put it in the football wing at the Louvre pic.twitter.com/QdUYNsNvAl
— CJ Fogler (@cjzer0) January 31, 2022
Gross.
The Rams won’t have the benefit of a quarterback who implodes like a glass skyscraper whenever he’s crowded in the pocket. That is, in fact, exactly what Joe Burrow has to deal with every week. Against the Titans he rose to glory despite being sacked nine times. In the AFC title game he operated a quick-hit offense designed to get the ball out of his hands when his line crumbles and used that to beat the Kansas City Chiefs.
Los Angeles can’t sit back and hope for Burrow to drop back in the pocket, face a little bit of pressure, and then have his inner monologue drowned out by panic alarms. Having Kupp and Beckham will help in what promises to be a shootout, but the Rams need Stafford to operate at full capacity rather than the malfunctioning trebuchet that launched a pumpkin right into Tartt’s incapable hands in the fourth quarter.
Stafford’s got two weeks to get ready for the biggest game of his life and a chance to provide instant gratification for the team that traded two first round picks to land him. Fortunately for him, if he’s shaky early he’ll have a few amazing talents to bail him out.