How the Seahawks managed Cooper Kupp's playing time in 2025 for 2026

Seahawks navigate a "tightrope" act with a 33-year-old receiver making $17 million

The date to part with Cooper Kupp or guarantee $9 million of his 2026 salary came and went on Friday without any official news on that front. It’s not just that fans should expect news only if the team had released Kupp, which obviously didn’t happen, but also whether or not the Seahawks had pushed back the date to make a decision like they did with Uchenna Nwosu in 2025.

Or I was even just expecting a statement from Brady Henderson or Bob Condotta that indeed the team is moving forward with Kupp as a $17.47 million receiver in 2026. Given that Henderson announced the Nwosu push-back on the Thursday before his guarantee was due last year, it’s looking like Kupp will be at the 18th most-expensive receiver in the NFL in 2026, at least.

Moving ahead into 2026, there have never been this many forces at play that would be working against Kupp playing a full season:

• Turns 33 in June

• Played a full season in 2025

• Played a full postseason in 2026

• Had IR stints in 2022, 2023, and 2024

• The last time Kupp reached the Super Bowl, he missed half of the next season with the cringe-inducing named “tightrope” surgery

(“Tightrope” surgery always makes me think of that scene from Pet Sematary when the little boy slices a man’s Achilles from underneath the bed.)

But the Seahawks are just as aware of these factors as we could be and they chose to take that risk of signing Kupp to a contract that all but guaranteed his place on the roster in 2026. This could be why Seattle was so careful with managing his playing time, his touches, and his workload in 2025.

What does that look like and what does Kupp actually cost next year? Probably more than he’s worth, but if the Seahawks paid $30 million for at least one Super Bowl win then Cooper Kupp was a bargain.

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Kupp is being paid like a top-15 WR at age 33

Barring a restructure of his contract (which would push $5.8 million worth of cap hit from 2026 to 2027), Kupp’s $17.47 million cap hit stands to rank in the top-15 league wide after certain players are released, traded, or restructured.

Receivers like Tyreek Hill, who is sure to be released, or D.J. Moore among those who could be restructured, or A.J. Brown, who is supposedly on the trade block.

If I started slicing and dicing contracts really fast (DK Metcalf, Chris Godwin, Calvin Ridley, Stefon Diggs, Darnell Mooney, Davante Adams and others easily make up a group of guys who could see their deals altered) then all of a sudden Kupp creeps into the top-10 of 2026 receiver salaries.

How much can really be expected of Kupp as a receiver next season?

• Kupp’s 70 targets ranked 77th (tied with Mark Andrews) in 2025

• Kupp’s 47 catches ranked 74th (tied with Alec Pierce)

• But Pierce had over 400 more yards than Kupp

• Kupp’s 2 touchdowns tied for 118th

• Kupp’s 26 first downs was 76th, same as A.J. Barner

There could be an inclination at this point to bring up “intangibles” to explain Kupp’s value and that’s fine. That’s a normal reaction and I’m not dismissing intangibles. Just right now in this section were talking about TANGIBLES, so let’s stay focused on the things we can measure.

If Kupp was the 75th-most valuable receiver at age 32 when the team had to cycle through a couple of other receivers during the season and wasn’t injured, could Kupp be expected to see his production INCREASE at age 33 when the Seahawks might want to get younger players more involved?

That’s doubtful. It’s not a criticism, it’s just a probability.

Some factors that would decrease Kupp’s target share in 2026:

• If Tory Horton is healthy

• If the Seahawks re-sign Rashid Shaheed

• If the new offensive coordinator wants to make a shift

• If A.J. Barner deserves another target bump (he does)

• If the Seahawks draft or acquire another receiver (they should)

• If Elijah Arroyo has a breakout campaign

There are in fact many events that could work together to decrease Kupp’s 70 targets in 2026.

In which case, Kupp’s value almost entirely has to be “intangible”.

How the Seahawks slowed down Kupp’s aging process

When Kupp won the Offensive Player of the Year award for the Rams in 2021, few non-running back skill players have ever had as much put on their plate as him that season:

• 191 targets

• 145 catches

• 42 targets in the playoffs

• 33 catches in the playoffs

• Totals: 233 targets and 178 receptions

Over 21 games that season, the Super Bowl MVP had an intense workload as Matthew Stafford really refused to work with anyone else, which is sort of that quarterback’s M.O. throughout his career.

Kupp played a combined total of 1,301 snaps in 2021. Then he had tightrope surgery in 2022 and couldn’t play in more than 12 games until 2025.

So how many snaps did Kupp play in his first full season since 2021?

768 snaps in the regular season. 147 snaps in the playoffs.

Kupp’s combined 915 snaps total in 2025 is almost 400 fewer snaps than he played with the Rams in 2021. (That’s almost as many snaps as how many Zach Charbonnet had in the regular season.)

The Seahawks have been doing everything in their power to keep Kupp on the field throughout the regular season and into the Super Bowl by limiting his playing time and then allow that power reserve to continue into his second season with Seattle in 2026.

So even though Kupp is probably never going to get 900 receiving yards again — or even 700 — his AVAILABILITY in the postseason allowed the Seahawks to have a complement to Jaxon Smith-Njigba who was able to secure some of the biggest catches for Seattle in the playoffs.

Kupp had 8 first down catches in the postseason, including 5 first downs with at least 9 yards to go. Some of those being of a 10/10 difficulty level like the notable sideline catch in the Super Bowl.

I never love citing intangibles because, well, they’re not measurable. No matter what argument anyone makes for “an intangible” it’s something that you could literally frame for any player having or not having and then crafting a story that serves a purpose like why a 33-year-old receiver who had 593 yards should be making $17 million.

It doesn’t mean that intangibles don’t matter because they do, or that Kupp hasn’t proven his value to the Seahawks because he has, it just means that fans don’t usually come to Seaside Joe to measure that which is by definition immeasurable.

You’ve got sports radio for that.

But Mike Macdonald is among many coaches who have found it easy to cite Kupp’s immeasurable value to football teams throughout his career from Eastern Washington to L.A. to Seattle calling him “a stud of a teammate” among other things:

As a teammate, Kupp helped Kendrick Bourne become an NFL player after they played together at Eastern, helped Puka Nacua become a top-3 receiver, helped Matthew Stafford win a Super Bowl, helped Jaxon Smith-Njigba become one of the other top-3 receivers, and helped Sam Darnold win a Super Bowl.

That’s worth plenty…and it has to be to get past Friday without a contract update.

Sometimes silence is the loudest statement of all.

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