Roughly a month has come and gone since Cooper Kupp announced the Rams were seeking to trade him “immediately.”
Despite still not having an agreement with another team, Los Angeles general manager Les Snead made it clear Wednesday that the passage of time has done little to change the All-Pro wide receiver’s eventual fate.
“There’s a scenario, but when you get into probabilities, that would be the least likely,” Snead said when asked during his news conference if there was a situation in which Kupp might return. “I don’t want to tell you no today and then next week, he’s a Ram. You see what I mean? But you see what we’re trying to do. We’re working to try to find a partner and a next chapter for Cooper and ourselves.”
If the book is indeed finished on Kupp’s time with the Rams, it’s undoubtedly a classic, with the finest chapter coming during the 2021 season.
Kupp, then at his peak, won the receiving triple crown with 145 catches, 1,947 yards and 16 touchdowns that campaign. He capped it all off by winning Offensive Player of the Year and then being voted Super Bowl LVI Most Valuable Player in L.A.’s victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
In three seasons since, though, Kupp has missed 17 games due to injury. When other teams showed interest in acquiring him near the 2024 trade deadline, the Rams held on to one of their longtime stars and proved right to do so by turning a 1-4 start into a postseason trip.
However, Kupp showed his age down the stretch. In his final seven games (including playoffs), he tallied fewer than 30 receiving yards five times, managed one catch or less on three occasions and reeled in just a single TD.
Whether or not he was still affected by an early season high ankle sprain, the Rams saw it best to move on from the soon-to-be 32-year-old who has delivered 634 catches, 7,776 yards and 57 TDs for the team since 2017.
“We sat down with Cooper and said this was definitely something we were going to look into based on over the course of the year, especially there at the trade deadline where people were knocking on the door to see if we were willing to trade him,” Snead said. “And just moving forward, we felt like this could be time for the next chapter for both parties, even though obviously all the chapters up until now have been very fruitful and impactful. All you can think of is the Super Bowl MVP, and we wouldn’t be champions without Cooper on that field that night.”
As for when a trade might finally come to pass, Kupp is due a $7.5 million roster bonus on the fifth day of the new league year, which begins March 12.
Snead wouldn’t speak in absolutes when asked if he’d have a resolution by then, but he acknowledged it’d be a date to aim for.
“If there is a deadline in this situation, that roster date does weigh a good bit in the algorithm of the formula that we’re working through,” he said.