Seahawks WR Cooper Kupp Is NOT a Fan of the Helmet-on-a-Stick Coaching Method

Cooper Kupp has thoughts about the helmet on a stick, and they are not favorable.

The bit started with Rich's well-documented affection for the football-on-a-stick device at the combine. Rich made clear he is obsessed with it, invoking Mike Mayock as a fellow devotee, and held one up for the camera to prove the point.

But the conversation took a turn when a photo of a helmet on a stick surfaced. That contraption, apparently used to simulate a stiff-arm target, set Kupp off.

"Look, I'm not a fan of it," Kupp said flatly.

From there he built a full case. The helmet-on-a-stick, in his view, represents a philosophy of doing less. Coaches, he argued, are standing around holding sticks rather than getting on a knee to snap the ball or doing anything physical. "I'd rather not have to do anything physical. I'm just going to hold a stick out there and do it," he said, satirizing the logic. "Don't work hard. Just hold the stick."

He compared the whole enterprise to AI, saying the stick is taking over the role of actual effort the same way artificial intelligence is replacing work people used to have to do themselves.

Rich asked whether the helmet-on-a-stick was meant to simulate a stiff-arm. Kupp confirmed it, then pivoted to his real grievance: someone is making money on this. "There's an industry. There's a market," Kupp said. "Anyone can make it. You just find a stick, put objects on them, see if someone pays for it, and you're a millionaire."

Someone in the room floated the idea of JSN on a stick. Kupp drew the line there, clarifying he would not advocate putting humans on the ends of sticks, but that any inanimate object was fair game for the experiment.

It was a short segment. But Kupp landed somewhere real underneath the comedy, that the creeping instinct to minimize physical effort, in coaching tools or anywhere else, is worth at least a little side-eye.