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SEATTLE — The outcome was poetic for Cooper Kupp.
He helped remove the Rams, the workforce that confirmed him the door final spring.
However for the Seattle Seahawks receiver, who made some key performs in Sunday night’s 31-27 victory, he most well-liked to be poetry in movement.
Kupp didn’t stick round for interviews. He discretely slipped out of the locker room. Gloating isn’t his fashion.
After celebrating together with his teammates and household on the confetti-covered discipline, Kupp hugged his younger youngsters and handed them off to his spouse and pa, then disappeared right into a raucous Seahawks locker room already thick with cigar smoke.
By the point the doorways have been opened to the media, he had packed up and left, letting his key performs do the speaking. He had a 13-yard landing catch within the third quarter and a seven-yard reception to eke out a pivotal first down within the fourth (though the exact spot of the ball was up for debate).
“I’ve had a pit in my abdomen all day,” stated his father, Craig Kupp, with an irrepressible smile on his face and a squirming grandson tucked beneath his arm. “I simply need the perfect for him and this workforce, and for this story to be written. I’m simply so grateful.”
The Seahawks are headed to their fourth Tremendous Bowl after lots of people projected them to complete third, and even fourth, within the NFC West. Oddsmakers have them favored by 4½ over New England within the Feb. 8 sport in Santa Clara.
Whether or not it was Kupp, main tackler Ernest Jones or reserve operating again Cam Akers — all former Rams — Sunday’s sport had private overtones. It needed to be a quietly triumphant second for the deep-thinking Kupp, who reads about two dozen books over the course of a season and writes poetry in his spare time.
Seems, multiple Seahawk was biting his tongue.
“There’s rather a lot that I want to say,” Jones conceded. “However God’s granted us this humbly, granted us this win so humbly. I’ve moved previous. I’m simply glad that my group, my workforce, that we’re going to the Tremendous Bowl.”
Was this candy schadenfreude for Kupp?
“I do know Coop doesn’t give it some thought like that,” quarterback Sam Darnold stated. “However for him to have the ability to step up on a day-to-day foundation for us, not solely in video games but additionally at apply on the facility, he’s a real chief for us.”
Darnold, in the meantime, is redefining his personal profession in actual time. As soon as written off as a flameout, the previous No. 3 choose of the woeful New York Jets made historical past Sunday, turning into the primary USC quarterback to achieve the Tremendous Bowl as an NFL starter.
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold passes towards the Rams within the third quarter of the NFC championship on Sunday.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Instances)
Carson Palmer received to the altar, making it to the NFC Championship sport with the Arizona Cardinals within the 2015 season earlier than shedding to Carolina.
“Sam is the definition of what a Trojan is,” former USC and NFL quarterback Matt Leinart texted Sunday evening. “He’s by no means given up, he’s continued to combat on though he’s been considered as a castaway. I’m actually completely satisfied for him and the way he’s dealt with all the things. Now he’s beginning in a Tremendous Bowl. LFG!!!”
This sport was a quarterback masterpiece, with Darnold and Matthew Stafford placing up almost equivalent numbers. Stafford accomplished 22 of 35 for 374 yards with three touchdowns; Darnold linked on 25 of 36 for 346 yards and three touchdowns.
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Gary Klein breaks down what went fallacious for the Rams of their 31-27 loss to the Seattle Seahawks within the NFC championship sport at Lumen Area.
Their passer rankings have been a photograph end: Stafford at 127.6 and Darnold at 127.8.
Seahawks security Julian Love, who started his profession with the New York Giants when Darnold was with the Jets, had a crosstown view of the quarterback’s profession evolution.
“He received a foul rap early, and I feel that’s not becoming for who he’s as an individual or as a participant,” Love stated. “He reveals it when he works exhausting. He’s humble about it. He takes no shortcuts within the course of.
“Everybody within the constructing loves him. He’s only a good man. He’s a man you possibly can get pleasure from enjoying golf with, and a man which you can take satisfaction in main you on the sector. All of that criticism isn’t warranted. He confirmed up when it mattered, and he gained us a sport at the moment.”
Whereas these nice Seahawks groups in the course of the Pete Carroll period have been a set of richly gifted characters — they have been Legion of Growth bombastic — this laser-focused group has to some extent taken on the bookish persona of second-year coach Mike Macdonald.
Macdonald was a straight-A scholar in highschool and graduated summa cum laude with a finance diploma from the College of Georgia.
“Geek is a praise,” he informed the know-how information website Geekwire in August. “I’ve been referred to as a soccer nerd.”
Oh, properly. Verify the scoreboard. Revenge of the Nerds.
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