Tag: Cooper Kupp

Cooper Kupp’s game-saving 44-yard catch vs. Bucs was historically improbable

What Cooper Kupp did had never been done.

Los Angeles Rams receiver Cooper Kupp hauled in a historically anomalous reception in the closing moments of the team’s AFC divisional-round win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday.

His 44-yard catch, which set up the game-winning field goal, was the longest play from scrimmage with less than one minute left in the fourth quarter of a postseason game, per NFL Network’s Andrew Siciliano. Admittedly, there’s a small sample size of plays that meet that criteria. That said, what Kupp did had never been done.

His clutch play, thanks to a beautiful throw from quarterback Matthew Stafford, helped keep the Rams from going into overtime. It was a tremendous effort from L.A. to get those points — especially considering Tom Brady was on the other side of the field.

There’s no saying what might have happened if Brady got a shot at overtime.

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Cooper Kupp comes up clutch for Rams in win over Buccaneers

Cooper Kupp made big plays when the Rams needed it most in Sunday’s victory over the Buccaneers to advance to the NFC Championship game.

All seemed lost for the Los Angeles Rams late in Sunday’s divisional matchup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Despite jumping out to a 27-3 lead in the contest, the Rams did everything in their power to suffer the same fate as the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl 51, allowing Tom Brady to lead his team back into the game with time waning down.

The game became knotted up at 27 following a Leonard Fournette touchdown run, leaving 42 seconds and a timeout for the Rams to avoid becoming a meme like the Falcons and the Golden State Warriors. While it was all smiles earlier in the game, every fan of the Rams watching everything unfold likely felt as if their heart was going to burst out of their chest.

But on the final drive of the fourth quarter, it was Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp that made career-defining plays when it mattered most. The drive began with Stafford taking a sack for a loss of 1, forcing Los Angeles to use its final timeout.

It felt as if the Rams were imploding at the most unfortunate time and that the Buccaneers were going to have all of the momentum entering overtime. The good thing is, Stafford and Kupp didn’t like the idea of playing overtime.

So in quick succession, Stafford would connect with Kupp on a 20-yard pass following the sack and timeout. Kupp was able to create space on the play, catch the ball, and then have the awareness to get out of bounds.

Todd Bowles has always lived and died by the blitz, and it’s safe to say it was the latter in what would be the game-deciding play. The Buccaneers brought a blitz from the nickel cornerback on the very next play and Stafford stood strong in the pocket, delivering a perfect pass down the field to Kupp.

Kupp was matched up one-on-one with safety Antoine Winfield Jr., so the advantage was in favor of the Rams. And with everyone holding their breath while the ball was in the air, Kupp corraled the pass and Los Angeles was able to spike the ball in time for Matt Gay to convert the game-winning field goal.

The Rams lost four fumbles throughout the game, including a rare miscue by Kupp himself when he was trying to gain extra yards on a reception. Los Angeles was able to overcome those fumbles and Kupp more than made up for his earlier blunder.

At the end of the game, Kupp finished with nine receptions for 183 yards and a touchdown. His final two receptions couldn’t have come at a better time for the Rams.

Kupp missed the Rams’ divisional round game against the Packers last season due to injury and was out for their Super Bowl run in 2018, but he’s already been a difference-maker this postseason now that he’s healthy.

While Stafford made some legacy-altering plays in Sunday’s narrow victory over the Buccaneers, Kupp showed exactly why he’s such a game-changer for the Rams in the postseason.

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Matthew Stafford’s Rams survived Brady’s Buccaneers and are who we thought they were

Tom Brady and the Buccaneers had almost finished another comeback, but Matthew Stafford said no.

Despite being favored by 2.5 points, the Rams were considered massive underdogs heading into Sunday’s NFL Playoff Divisional Round game against the legendary Tom Brady and the Buccaneers. The defending Super Bowl champions with the untouchable playoff quarterback against Matthew Stafford — the king of the losers, the Lions and a stand-in for all forgotten talented players.

Now you can go back and replace the word “losers.”

Despite doing their very best to let Brady and company back into yet another memorable fourth quarter of this NFL Divisional Weekend, the Rams have qualified for the NFC Championship Game. It probably should have never been as close as 30-27, and it probably should have never come to the point where Stafford needed to rescue the Rams. But, in truth, is anyone going to ruminate too much over the moment if the results remain sublime?

If it means they’re in the NFC Championship Game anyway?

Pandemonium on this football weekend is proving to be grander than most.

To understand how the Rams got here, where a 30-yard Matt Gay chip shot was enough to take them to the second-to-last day of January, you have to start at the beginning.

You have to understand what it means to take a risk.

Last January, following a disappointing Divisional Round exit to the Packers, Sean McVay decided to get bold. He, and the Rams, traded multiple first-round picks for Matthew Stafford. And after such a move, expectations were always going to be sky-high. Pay that price, and you’re not only expecting persistent fireworks, you’re also thinking gold and diamond rings. Or in other words, a championship. A renowned savant of an offensive mind in many league circles, McVay took Jared Goff to a Super Bowl, where they fell to (who else) Brady. The assumption now was that if McVay could almost climb to the top of the mountain back then with, no offense to Mr. Goff, a limited quarterback, he could do anything with a far-more gifted player like Stafford.

You know what they say about people who make assumptions. It’s not very kind, and I won’t write it in print here for the risk of any innocent children reading. But this time, it was correct.

After getting out to a 7-1 start that gave a nice cushion for Stafford and McVay, they traded for former Super Bowl MVP Von Miller. As if perennial All-Pros Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey weren’t enough, they now had another world-destroyer of a running mate in the fold. To add further to an embarrassment of riches, they added the ever-talented, Pro Bowl-level receiver, Odell Beckham Jr. just about a week later (sorry Browns, the city of Cleveland, and or Baker Mayfield).

The Rams had what you could call an All-Star team. A roster full of veterans and coaches chasing a championship together while humiliating the rest of the NFL in the process. They were all-in, taking a risk that these moves could make them vulnerable in the future. If they were in Vegas, they’d be a high-roller with their own table.

Not that they’re advisable or worth the risk, but sometimes lofty, all-in bets pay off. Sometimes, confidence pays off.

But while they had all the talent in the world on paper, the Rams stumbled some. A slow finish to the regular season meant Los Angeles would not have home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs despite that aforementioned hot start. Upsets in the early postseason meant they would have to unseat NFL royalty in Brady, despite the Rams’ impressive win over the Arizona Cardinals in the Wild Card Round.

Let’s take it back to that game-winner from Gay, but check-in about half a quarter or so before it.

Play as well as they did for 50 minutes, and you would have thought it would be in the bag. But it is never so simple against football’s consummate king-warrior. After amassing what would feel like an  insurmountable 27-3 lead to anyone not named the Atlanta Falcons, Brady and the Buccaneers (thanks to a few unfortunate bounces of the oblong ball) roared back to tie this battle.

But Stafford made sure that the game-tying touchdown pass by Brady did not matter. With a little over 30 seconds to go and one timeout, Stafford (and triple-crown winner, Cooper Kupp) made Brady’s infamous capacity to steal any big game, no matter the odds, irrelevant.

What do you know? Big-time players, no matter their background, do make big-time plays.

From there, as noted, Gay took it home.

Those loser narratives that plagued Stafford and every other phenomenal talent unfortunately mired in NFL Purgatory? Gone.

This one was for the players like Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson.

No one knows what’s going to happen next for the Stafford-McVay-Kupp Rams. Football is too fickle a sport ever to be too confident about any result. We almost saw as much on Sunday afternoon. But in a year where they decided to push their chips in, the Rams have a chance to host the Super Bowl if they can get past divisional rival San Francisco. And if they can overcome Brady’s Buccaneers, who’s to say they can’t bask in yellow and blue confetti on February 13?

You’d be hard-pressed to think the Rams will waste this opportunity. In acquiring Beckham Jr., Miller and Stafford, this was always their ceiling: A Super Bowl contender capable of beating anyone. Even Tom Brady.

And after everything he’s been through in the past, a Stafford Super Bowl win is within view.

Go figure.

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Rams’ final drive proves that Matthew Stafford is made for the big moment

Matthew Stafford took all the slings and arrows allotted to a “losing” quarterback, and shoved them right back in the faces of his doubters.

In Matthew Stafford’s 12-year tenure with the Lions from 2009 through 2020, the narrative on the quarterback was that he had as much talent as anyone at his position in the league, but the results were left wanting. There was far more talk of Stafford’s 74-90-1 “record” in the regular season, and 0-3 postseason mark, than there was around the fact that Stafford was generally playing from behind in a personnel sense. The Lions were able to select Stafford with the first overall pick in the 2009 draft because the Matt Millen era had just ended, and the 2008 Detroit team didn’t win a single game.

It takes a while to get past that kind of trauma.

So Stafford, who had the fifth-most attempts (6,224), the sixth-most completions (3,898), the seventh-most passing yards (45,109), and the seventh-most touchdowns (282) from 2009 through 2020, was dinged more for his relative inefficiency — he tied with Drew Brees for the fifth-most interceptions in that time with 144, his passer rating of 89.9 ranked 27th, and his Adjusted Net Yards per Pass Attempt of 6.32 ranked 24th.

When the Rams traded Jared Goff, two first-round picks, and a third-round pick to Detroit for Stafford before the 2021 season, head coach Sean McVay didn’t care about any of that — he saw a quarterback who could execute the ideal version of his passing game in ways that Goff never could.

“The way he’s able to see the field, you see [Aaron] Rodgers, [Patrick] Mahomes — [who] have done an outstanding job of being able to move and manipulate coverage and change their arm slots, and Matthew has done a lot of those same things,” McVay said of Stafford around the time the trade was consummated. “I think he’s got great wide-field vision, sees the field. He’s able to speed it up if he has issues. You’re watching a guy that if you watch the film, the game makes sense to him, and I really respect the lens that he sees it through.”

Stafford had his issues for a while in McVay’s offense — opponents were diving all over his quick reads for pick-sixes, and he didn’t always see things downfield as he needed to. But in Week 3, when the Rams beat the defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers 34-24, Stafford completed 27 of 38 passes for 343 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 134.0. Stafford was particularly devastating against the blitz, completing seven of nine passes for 147 yards and a touchdown against five or more rushers, and on the season, Stafford nuked blitzing defenses for 85 completions on 118 passes for 1,031 yards, 530 air yards, 14 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 138.1 against the blitz. Stafford’s Positive Play Rate of 59.5% against the blitz is the NFL’s best — Patrick Mahomes ranks second at 58.0%.

Still, in the divisional round rematch against the Bucs, and even when the Rams got out to a 27-3 lead… well, once the Bucs started their comeback, everyone assumed that the Tom Brady comeback was its usual inevitability, and that Stafford would fold in comparison as the sunshine soldier he was presumed to be.

But after Tampa Bay tied the game 27-27 on a nine-yard Leonard Fournette touchdown run with 42 seconds left, the script was already written — the game would go to overtime, Brady would rip the hearts out, and things would be as they always were.

Stafford had other ideas, and he expressed them in two perfect throws to Cooper Kupp. The first came with 35 seconds left in the game, and it was a 20-yard pass to Cooper Kupp.

Then, Stafford’s denouement — the 44-yard completion to Kupp against Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Todd Bowles’ Cover-0 all-out blitz.

That put the ball at the Tampa Bay 12-yard line, but the Rams also had to haul it to the line of scrimmage so that Stafford could clock the ball, and kicker Matt Gay could boot the 30-yard game-winner.

Which is exactly what happened.

There will be a lot of talk this offseason about the wisdom of that blitz, but whoever called Stafford a situational winner before is barbecuing crow for dinner. Stafford had less than a minute to counter the greatest quarterback and the greatest winner in NFL history, and on this day, he had everything it took to turn Brady’s tide back.

The Buccaneers were way too aggressive on the game-ending completion to Cooper Kupp

That’s a call Todd Bowles would like to have back.

That one stings. The Buccaneers almost completed an improbable comeback after being down multiple scores late in the game against the Rams, but fell just short after a dagger from Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp that gave the Rams an easy field goal to advance to the NFC Championship game.

Somehow, Kupp found himself wide open running past Bucs safety Antoine Winfield Jr. on the penultimate play of the game. How could the best wide receiver from the season, who led the NFL in catches, yards and touchdowns, wind up in one-on-one coverage on a safety with the season on the line?

Well, it appears to be a very aggressive call from defensive coordinator Todd Bowles — one that was probably a little bit too aggressive.

Shortly after the game, we got a clearer image at what went wrong for the Buccaneers. Bowles called an aggressive Cover-0 blitz (the “zero” literally means zero defenders playing deep), which put Winfield Jr. in the unenviable position of being one-on-one with arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL.

Live by the blitz, die by the blitz. No one would have been complaining if they got home for a sack there, but that’s an unreasonably risky playcall in that situation. Keep the offense in front of you, try to tackle, try to get to overtime. That’s the playbook there.

This doesn’t mean that Todd Bowles is a bad defensive coordinator — he is almost objectively one of the best defensive minds in this era of football — but this was a bad moment for them.

A learning experience, but a painful mistake all the same.

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Watch the 44-yard bomb to Cooper Kupp that saved the Rams’ win over the Bucs

Stafford. Kupp. 44 yards. Watch it over and over again.

It’s only fitting that Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp came through with the play that saved the day for the Los Angeles Rams.

With 42 seconds left and only one timeout, the Rams had an outside chance to beat the Buccaneers in regulation after Tampa Bay somehow tied it despite trailing 27-3 at one point. After a completion of 20 yards, Stafford chucked it deep to Kupp down the middle, hoping for one last prayer before overtime.

Kupp hauled it in for a 44-yard gain, setting the Rams up at the 12-yard line with 4 seconds to play. It was the biggest play of Stafford’s life, giving the Rams the win after they blew a 24-point lead.

After leaving a 47-yard field goal short earlier in the game, Gay left no doubt about the 30-yarder that won the game for Los Angeles. He drilled it through the uprights and sent the Rams to the NFC Championship Game.

Breaking down the Matthew Stafford touchdown to Cooper Kupp

Diving into how Matthew Stafford was able to connect with Cooper Kupp on a 70-yard touchdown pass.

The Los Angeles Rams could not have asked for a better start to their divisional round contest with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as the visitors are out to an early 17-3 lead early in the second quarter.

One of the big plays from the Rams offense in the early going was a huge 70-yard touchdown strike from Matthew Stafford to wide receiver Cooper Kupp, that not only converted a 3rd and 20 situation for the Rams, but gave Los Angeles their second touchdown of the game.

The big play begins with the protection up front. Tampa Bay brings just four after Stafford, but the fourth defender — outside linebacker Shaquil Barrett — is tasked with jamming tight end Tyler Higbee before letting him release into the route. As such, Stafford has a clean pocket and an opportunity to step up before releasing the throw:

At first blush, the play looked like a potential coverage bust in the secondary. But through a few different angles, we can see how the passing concept, the coverage and the eyes from the quarterback put stress on the defense.

Tampa Bay drops into a Cover 2 look on this play, while the Rams send two vertical routes deep from the right side of the field. Kupp releases vertically towards the right boundary, while Van Jefferson splits the pair of two deep safeties.

As you can see from this depiction of the play, this route concept — and coverage — puts stress on safety Mike Edwards, who is aligned to that side of the field. In this coverage as a half-field safety, when both the inside and the outside receiver release vertically, he tries to split the difference between the two, breaking when the quarterback makes his decision and throw:

Here is where Stafford comes in.

As you can see from “the dots,” Edwards midpoints between Jefferson and Kupp, but then breaks towards the middle of the field and Jefferson’s safety-splitter. Instead, Stafford throws to the outside. As you can see from this angle, Stafford moves Edwards to the route in the middle of the field with his eyes, then flashes them late to the outside to pick up Kupp deep along the sideline:

Stafford starts with his field of vision to the left, trying to sell Edwards on the route in the middle of the field. Only late in the play does the QB flash his eyes to the right, and while Edwards tries to recover, he cannot prevent the catch.

Then, compounding matters, Kupp makes him miss in the open field, and the Rams are in the end zone.

This play ended up being the perfect storm for the Buccaneers. The coverage concept when matched up with this route concept put the safety in a bind, and without the ability to get pressure on the quarterback — due in part to the four-man rush with one of the defenders getting a late start — Stafford had time to both use his eyes and let the concept develop.

Rams’ Matthew Stafford hits Cooper Kupp for 70-yard touchdown pass

The Rams are off and running and Matthew Stafford found Cooper Kupp for a 70-yard TD

It could be understood why the Tampa Bay Buccaneers whiffed on covering Kendall Blanton. Missing Cooper Kupp is another story.

After Matthew Stafford found the backup TE for a touchdown, the quarterback came back and hit the great Kupp for a play that went 70 yards.

After the PAT, Los Angeles led 17-3.

And a different way to see it.

Watch: Cooper Kupp scores 70-yard TD after being left wide open

The Buccaneers inexplicably left Cooper Kupp wide open and he turned it into a 70-yard touchdown

Cooper Kupp won the receiving triple-crown this season, leading the NFL in receptions, yards and touchdowns. Yet, the Buccaneers decided not to cover him on a critical third-and-20 play in the second quarter.

Kupp was left wide open down the right side and Matthew Stafford didn’t miss him, chucking it deep and completing the pass to his top receiver. Kupp beat everyone to the end zone to put the Rams up 17-3 on the Buccaneers, continuing what was an early onslaught by Los Angeles.

Kupp is already up to 87 yards and a touchdown on just two catches, burning the Buccaneers with this massive play in the first half.

Divisional playoff preview: How the Rams can beat the Buccaneers

For the Rams to beat the Bucs and head to the NFC Championship Game, these three things are of paramount importance.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a time this season when Rams head coach Sean McVay was happier than he was after his team’s 34-24 Week 3 win over the defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers. The Rams had traded Jared Goff, two first-round picks, and a third-round pick to the Lions for Matthew Stafford, and this was one instance in which Stafford’s plus-level attributes showed up en masse. McVay had grown tired of Goff hitting his head on his own ceiling, but with Stafford, the Rams had nothing but blue sky, as he completed 27 of 38 passes for 343 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 134.0.

Stafford bombed the Bucs’ depleted secondary for three completions on five attempts of 20 or more air yards for 117 yards and a touchdown, and this as close to McVay’s ideal vision for his passing game as you’ll ever see.

“What he’s done through three games, I think his resumé speaks for itself,” the giddy coach said after the game. “He’s done a great job through these three games. And that’s all he can really do. I think he’s just seamlessly accommodated himself or really acclimated himself to being in our building. His teammates love him. His coaches love him. And he just goes about his business. He’s so steady, so consistent. And I just thought he got better as the game progressed. And, you know, love working with him.”

Stafford has had his ups and downs since, and there are clear things about his game that can be countered, but if he’s able to put together a similar performance, and everything else breaks as it did for the Rams in Week 3, there’s a pretty good chance that McVay is about to dethrone the champs and head back to the NFC Championship game for the first time since the 2018 season.

Here’s what the Rams should do in a schematic sense to ensure that the second verse is the same as the first. .