Is Cooper Kupp worth it?

Can the Seahawks afford a great mentor and a replacement level receiver?

The most that Seahawks fans could say about Cooper Kupp’s production as a receiver this season is that he hasn’t been egregiously bad for a 32-year-old. That leaves a razor thin margin for Kupp to be good enough as a blocker and mentor to be worth the amount he is guaranteed to make in Seattle and the $9.35 million cap hit he’s carrying in 2025.

After nine weeks, and sitting out Seattle’s win over the Moons with a hamstring injury, Kupp has caught 24 passes for 293 yards and one touchdown in seven games. That’s an average of 12.2 yards per catch, which is not that far off from Kupp’s Offensive Player of the Year season (13.4 YPC), but only 41.9 yards per game. That would be a career-low.

Kupp has the 19th-largest salary cap in 2025 among all receivers but ranks 67th in both total receiving yards and yards per game, whereas his 72.7% catch rate is 24th among wideouts and his 8.9 yards per target is 36th.

The context you can’t miss is the significance of averaging a 73% catch and 8.9 yards per target and NOT being a relatively valuable receiver because that is INSANE to me.

Before there was Wes Welker it was rare to see high-volume receivers be that efficient:

• Between 2000-2013 there were 12 individual seasons of a receiver averaging at least 70% catches and 8 yards per target on a minimum of 100 targets

• 3 of those 12 seasons were Welker

• Randall Cobb was the only WR to do it from 2012-2013

Then four guys did it in 2014, including “number ones” like Antonio Brown and Odell Beckham Jr.. Then four more again in 2015, four in 2016, two in 2017, and then there were six in 2018. Receivers became hyper efficient, first in the slot with “shifty” players like Welker, and then eventually with the biggest names in the sport.

Eight different receivers hit the marks in 2020, and then in 2021 Kupp caught 145 passes for 1,947 yards and 16 touchdowns, averaging a catch rate of 75.9% and 10.2 yards per target.

Last season, another seven players had at least 70% catches and 8 yards per target, including Ja’Marr Chase, who reached the receiver “triple crown” just three years after Kupp did it; leading the NFL in catches, yards, and touchdowns had only happened three times between 1967 and 2020. Now it’s happened twice in the last four years.

It’s only the halfway mark, but 10 players are on pace to reach 70%/8.0 YPT in 2025, including a few unremarkable names like Kendrick Bourne (we’ll come back to him in a minute), Tre Tucker, and Khalil Shakir. Not to take anything away from those receivers because they’re fine players but remember we were talking about something that happened a couple times a year and now a modern NFL offense can pull it off with Tre Tucker.

And if you’re one of the league’s best receivers like Jaxon Smith-Njigba, then you’re on pace for 123 catches, 2,014 yards, 73.4% catches, and 12 yards per target.

In the Super Bowl era, the only receiver to average over 70% catches and 12 yards per target is Brandon Aiyuk in 2023 and he did that on only 105 targets. JSN is on pace for 168 targets.

To take this back to Cooper Kupp’s first season with the Seahawks, yes he is catching 73% of his targets and yes he is averaging 9 yards per target, but those numbers are greatly diminished by the context of the year and the number of times that Sam Darnold has thrown at him. There are 19 receivers currently over 70% catches and 8.0 yards per target on a minimum of 20 targets, including guys we would call a “number 3” and most of whom didn’t get $17.5 million guaranteed.

If you sit at the top of this list like JSN and Puka and Amon-Ra St. Brown, who we can probably call “the next evolution of the Wes Welker tree”, then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Then there are a handful of good receivers like DeVonta Smith, Rashee Rice, Zay Flowers, and Michael Pittman.

But anyone under 60 yards per game needs to be able to boost his resume with value-raising context that won’t show up on the stat sheet.

And quite amazingly, 3 of the top-9 receivers on this list are former or current teammates of Cooper Kupp, all of whom pay respect to Kupp and the mentorship he provided that helped them become better receivers.

Kendrick Bourne

Players at Eastern Washington University are not supposed to come close to the NFL and yet somehow two receivers on the same EWU team reached the pros and have thrived. Bourne told “The Money Down” podcast earlier this year that Kupp was the one who pushed him to become the best version of himself that he could be, saying:

“He talked to me and he told me like, ‘Bro you a better player than me, I just work harder than you.’ And that’s a big statement from somebody that’s the best in the league… This is somebody that’s talking to me before he’s even who he is… but he told me that… and it really hit me hard… he’s talked about all over ESPN and we’re at a small school… that was that moment [I bought in].”

Kupp set all sorts of FCS records at EWU, but even he felt that Bourne had the higher ceiling. Well, he probably wasn’t right about that but they pushed each other and both made it to the NFL. Bourne was an undrafted free agent with the 49ers in 2017 and is still in the league nine years later, back with San Francisco.

In fact, Bourne has 463 yards and is on pace for new career-highs while averaging 73% catches and 11.3 yards per target.

Puka Nacua

A fifth round pick out of BYU in 2023, Nacua had all the same “omg this guy’s so good in minicamp” hype that most day three picks get so I’ll admit I was very skeptical that any of it was real. Then Kupp hurt his hamstring in training camp and it became apparent that Nacua would actually have to start from the beginning.

In the four games that Kupp missed, Nacua caught 39 passes for 501 yards to start his career. Puka set a bunch of rookie records with 105 catches for 1,486 yards, but that’s especially unusual for a day three pick.

Not that it’s surprising, but Nacua gave a lot of credit to “dad” Cooper Kupp:

“Yeah, a ton. I can imagine my career being a lot different if I didn’t have Cooper Kupp around,” Nacua said via phone. “But being able to be a mentor, and especially in the offseason, being a brother and being able to spend time together and learn who he is outside of a football player – the dad of Cooper Kupp – and just being able to just to hang out. I feel like I mentioned before, but a brother I feel like I didn’t know I had. And then being able to compete with him at the highest level, too. Like, man, we get to come in and he’s always trying to refine his game, and I’m always trying to learn more, so he’s always willing to give more information out, so it’s been a blessing to be by him.”

Nacua is the only receiver on the same level as JSN this year and it can’t be entirely coincidental that they’ve had the same “older brother”.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba

I’m sure that Kupp would tell you that JSN was already on his way to being a star before Seattle signed him as the new slot receiver, but Smith-Njigba’s historic season comes at a time when he is linked up with the best all-around teammate he’s ever had at the position.

“You go down the list of teammates that I’ve had, I’ve been blessed,” Smith-Njigba said, via the team’s website. “To have Coop here this year, it’s the cherry on top. I can’t wait to learn from him, I’ve already learned a ton from him in just two days and some text messages. Just to get a different perspective on the game is something I’ll always value and respect. I can’t wait. We sat next to each other in the meeting room today, and there’s going to be a lot of questions that I ask. That’s just how I am, that’s how I’m built, asking DK, asking Tyler, asking the guys who have been there before, and Cooper Kupp’s at the top of that list.”

After Kupp had been with the team a little while in the offseason, Mike Macdonald piled on to say that he was setting a good example for the third or fourth-youngest roster in the league:

“I’m happy he’s on our team,” Macdonald said. “I just couldn’t be happier to have him as a Seahawk. All the things he does on the field, the attention to detail, the work ethic, the attitude, the enthusiasm, just as a leader of your program too.”

Kupp compared JSN’s competitiveness to another teammate:

“I think the first thing that struck me [about JSN], he plays a lot stronger than he gets credit for,” Kupp said. “His decisiveness and belief in himself and what he can do. He’s incredibly competitive. He knows he’s not going to lose. It’s similar to what Puka [Nacua] was coming in as well. Their competitiveness and play strength are very similar.”

It’s easy to overrate a player’s impact on his teammates when you have an agenda to do so, and it is impossible to assign a dollar value to it.

There’s just no way that I’m going to be able to quantify if Kupp is “worth” $17.5 million guaranteed and $9.5 million in base salary (between $8-$17.5m in 2026, depending if he’s still on the team or not) based on his aura or his leadership or his je ne sais quoi. I can’t do it.

Which, unfortunately, is another way of saying that Kupp is probably not worth his salary because if nobody can quantify his non-production related value then that means that John Schneider can’t quantify it.

Seattle’s trade for Rashid Shaheed on Tuesday, while bearing little resemblance to Kupp as a receiver, could definitely be evidence that the Seahawks are already getting familiar with this way of thinking. Shaheed could be the new complement to JSN, arguably even pushing him back inside with Horton as the other outside option in 2026. Should Seattle like what they see from their newest weapon this season, Schneider could essentially swap out the money saved by releasing Kupp to extend Shaheed.

Speaking of those rates I mentioned earlier, Shaheed flashed an incredible ceiling as a rookie in 2022:

• 28 catches on 34 targets (82.4%)

• 488 yards (14.4 yards per target)

• 70.6% success rate

And that was before Shaheed had Cooper Kupp as a teammate.

The list of players who “happened” to get better while being on a team with Kupp is just as remarkable as his own resume, which by the way has him ranked ninth in receiving yards since 2017. Bourne, Puka, JSN, not to mention that Robert Woods had his best seasons while playing next to Kupp; Brandin Cooks had his best season while playing next to Kupp; Van Jefferson and Josh Reynolds had their best seasons playing next to Kupp; Odell Beckham Jr. had an incredible playoff run and won a Super Bowl playing next to Kupp.

And by the way Seattle drafts a receiver in the fifth round and he’s already caught five touchdowns.

Quarterbacks don’t seem too mad either, whether that’s helping Jared Goff shed the bust label in 2017, helping Matthew Stafford shed the “loser” label by winning the Super Bowl in 2021, or joining the Seahawks as one of the top free agent signings alongside MVP candidate Sam Darnold:

“He’s always in the QB room,” Darnold said, per the Seahawks’ website. “Very early in the morning, very late as well. He just loves football and that’s what you want out of everybody on the team.”

Offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak also echoed a similar sentiment.

“He’s one of the best teammates I’ve ever been around,” Kubiak said. “He’s a leader, and it’s no BS, like Sam said, he’s in there as long as the QBs are. He’s got great questions, he’s always pushing our offense forward and pushing the coaches as well.”

“He just understands coverage so well,” Darnold said. “He understands defenses. He understands what we’re trying to do as an offense. I think that’s the easiest way to say it, he’s just very knowledgeable about defenses and certain leverages that guys are in and where the voids are in the zones.”

Can you put a price on what Kupp brings to the Seahawks? No. But Schneider’s going to have to assign a dollar value to something and since that’s probably going to be his targets, catches, yards, touchdowns, and games played, Kupp has a lot of ground to make up. In the meantime, the Seahawks will be happy if he reach his third career Super Bowl*.

*Yes, Kupp was injured half of 2018 + playoffs

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