Seahawks WR Cooper Kupp Talks ‘Hard Knocks,’ Rams & More with Rich

Cooper Kupp took the call from a borrowed office, and that was on purpose.

"We usurped an office that I don't think is getting the treatment," Kupp told Rich, explaining that the Hard Knocks crews had not bothered wiring the workspace of a maintenance guy named Alex. The head coach's office was never an option. "That one would definitely be camera'd up."

Rich, who has never met a camera he did not like, was disappointed. The cameras are fine, mostly, and they blend into the background, but the defending champions have adapted. Conversations have moved into hallways. "We got tricks," Kupp said. "We turn the music on kind of loud when we want to talk about something. There's always ways around it."

Less Hard Knocks than HBO mob drama, as Rich put it. It also explains the scene where Kupp showed his head coach something on a screen that the audience never got to see. Asked to reveal it, Kupp offered nothing. "It was nothing crazy. Solving world hunger, world peace, all those kinds of things."

Year 10 is where he is, and the enthusiasm has not thinned. Some mornings are hard, Kupp said, but the difficult part of the day is leaving his wife and kids, not the work.

What he geeks out on is the chess. "You get handed a piece of paper with a bunch of lines on it that tells you what to do," Kupp said, but inside that concept sit gray areas, coverage rules, quarterback progressions and timing that shifts on the fly. If the defense shows a look that shuts down the front side early, the quarterback speeds up, which means the third or fourth read speeds up too. "Now you got to bring your concept to life and do it in a new way and a new space and a new timing."

Rich brought up something Rod Woodson once told him, that there is no more adaptive an organism in life than an NFL defense. Kupp agreed with one amendment. "I would say that's completely true for good defenses," he said. "The good defenses find ways to adapt and move even in game." Adjustments arrive mid-game and the rules an offense trusted stop applying. "The playing field has now changed. We've got to find ways to adapt on our end now."

On new coordinator Brian Flores, Kupp gave up nothing. He had joked to Rich once that Seattle was running the wing T, and he held that line. "It is different. We have a new OC. He's different than our old one."

Sam Darnold, at least, is unchanged. "Still loves his macaroni and fried chicken," Kupp said.

Asked whether the Seahawks are annoyed that the conversation has drifted to the Rams and a possible Aaron Donald return while Seattle holds the ring, Kupp declined the bait. "Most guys are thinking we've got practice here in about 40 minutes."

The moment that landed came from Sean McVay, who said on a podcast that Kupp made him a better coach and a better person, and that Kupp is an all-time Ram whether or not he plays another snap. Kupp believed the clip was from last year, then talked about his eight years in Los Angeles anyway, where his boys were born. "We started with the Rams together and we grew through that," he said.

He and his wife also have a coffee company opening any day now, sourcing from Mexico, Ethiopia, Colombia and Brazil. Rich pointed out that those would technically be coffee cups, not mugs. Kupp had somehow never heard that one.