How meticulous is Cooper Kupp? Days later, he’s still obsessed about a missed preseason block

How exacting is Cooper Kupp?

The veteran wide receiver, the 2021 NFL offensive player of the year and Super Bowl MVP, is in his ninth training camp in the league. He’s played in 104 regular-season games, 17 playoff games and one Super Bowl in his career.

Yet was still lamenting, four days later, a missed block. Sixteen yards down the field. In a preseason game.

“Honestly, if I handle business on the first play of the game and get up on to the post safety, Charbs might break that thing for a touchdown right out of the gate, which would’ve been pretty cool,” Kupp said earlier this week of Zach Charbonnet’s 13-yard run on the first play of the Seahawks’ preseason game Friday night against Kansas City.

That safety Kupp didn’t block, Chamarri Conner, tackled Charbonnet in the open field.

So what that the Seahawks aren’t paying Kupp $17 million this year to catch passes like the elite slot receiver he’s been with the Los Angeles Rams, not to block?

How curious is Kupp, still, at age 32?

He goes to the quarterbacks meetings that new starter Sam Darnold, veteran backup Drew Lock and rookie Jalen Milroe hold each day, along with new Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and new QBs coach Andrew Janocko.

“I try to be in as many of their meetings as I can,” Kupp said. “It’s just great to hear what the thinking is that’s happening in that room.”

The former Eastern Washington star and son of former Pacific Lutheran Loggers NAIA Division-II record-setting quarterback Craig Kupp, Cooper Kupp says sitting in QB meetings exposes him to the details his passer is looking at away from where Kupp is running his pass route. He says he better learns where the quarterback starts his progression of reading the defense’s coverage, depending on where the, say, safety is positioned at the snap. Kupp learns in these meetings the defense’s looks likely to force his QB to break off his progression read sooner than scripted.

“It gives you the ability of (thinking), ‘Man, how can I be in the right spots for the quarterback when he needs me there?’ ” Kupp said.

“There’s just next-level stuff that can come out of (the quarterbacks’ meetings). You’re hearing what he’s thinking, what he’s being taught, how his mind works, and how that can translate to being a problem-solver, when it comes down to it.”

Kupp said he’s been sitting with quarterbacks in their meetings since he was the 2013 Jerry Rice Award winner as the best freshman in the nation at EWU and the 2016 Walter Payton Award winner as the best player in the FCS.

“As much as I could (at Eastern),” Kupp said. “It’s tough, you know, because you’ve got classes.

“I took golf, and that was really important. I had to get to that golf class,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember.”