Former EWU stars Kupp, Ebukam vie for Super Bowl

Cooper Kupp has heard the voices in his head for more than a decade: “You can’t do this.”

Samson Ebukam heard them, too.

But on Sunday afternoon at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the doubts will give way to the certainty that one of them will be playing in the Super Bowl.

Teammates for eight years at Eastern Washington University and the Los Angeles Rams, the two overcame the odds and naysayers to find fame and fortune at the highest levels of competition.

“Just playing the game I love,” Kupp has said many times, beginning as an EWU Eagle and continuing through his MVP-caliber year with the Rams.

Now they’re now on opposite sides of the field after Ebukam signed as a defensive end last year with the rival San Francisco 49ers.

In Sunday’s NFC Championship Game, Kupp will be catching passes thrown by quarterback Matthew Stafford – that is, unless Stafford gets sacked by Ebukam.

And yet the doubts persist. Ebukam has often been labeled a “tweener” – too small to play defensive end, not fast enough at outside linebacker.

Kupp has been labeled as “too slow” for most of his football life.

This year, Kupp put together one of the greatest seasons by an NFL receiver: 145 catches, 1,947 yards, and 16 touchdowns.

The numbers were undeniable, yet accompanied by left-handed compliments.

Beau Baldwin, his former college coach at Eastern, had heard enough.

On Jan. 15, Baldwin took to Twitter to implore fans to “please stop talking about Coop as being ‘savvy’ or ‘crafty.’

“This guy can flat out play! … Go get that playoff W!” Baldwin wrote.

Last weekend against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Kupp did just that. With seconds left in a tie game with the defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers, he sped past defenders to make a long reception to set up the winning field goal.

‘It was just something I loved’As long as Kupp can remember, a ball was in his hands.

There was Nerf basketball in the living room when he was a toddler.

Youth baseball saw him through hot summers in his hometown of Yakima. And then came football.

“I was 9 years old and a football team was practicing in the outfield, so I went over and checked it out,” Kupp said.

Given his bloodlines, how could he resist?

His grandfather, Jake Kupp, was an offensive lineman in the National Football League for 10 years. Cooper’s father, Craig, played two years in the NFL as a quarterback after starring at Pacific Lutheran.

“But they never forced anything on me,” Kupp said. “It was just something that I loved.”

By the fifth grade, he dreamed of having the football in his hands as a running back at USC.

But real life intervened. By Kupp’s freshman year at Davis High School in Yakima, his physique wasn’t keeping pace with his aspirations: he stood all of 5-foot-4 and weighed about 115 pounds.

An immigrant’s taleHalf a world away, Ebukam was one of seven children in a crowded city in Nigeria.

Ebukam’s father, Tobias, a businessman, had seen enough of the United States to seek a better life for his family.

He settled in Portland, where he scrimped and saved to bring his family to America – child by child. It took eight years.

When Samson was 6, three older siblings departed for America. Three years later, Samson and the younger children came, too – without their mother, Stella, who arrived a few years after that.

Smart enough to be bumped up a grade in Nigeria, Ebukam was pushed back down in America because he didn’t speak English. His first four months in Portland were spent in front of a television, learning a new language “by trying to repeat what they said.”

Scrawny as a child, Ebukam recalls being bullied until the eighth grade, when a growth spurt opened up the world of sports.

Ebukam played soccer with more abandon than grace, racking up so many red cards that he was invited to try American football.

“It was a new world for me,” Ebukam said.

Overachieving and overlooked

As a high school senior in 2011, Kupp had 60 catches and a school-record 22 touchdowns – good enough only for an honorable mention on the 4A all-state team, though he did make first team as a defensive back.

Kupp also was named by the Seattle Times as a “White Chip” selection – one of the top 100 prospects in the state. Presumably, the “Blue Chip” athletes were bigger and faster.

College recruiters were equally unimpressed.

Three weeks after his high school season ended, he received his first scholarship offer. It was from Eastern Washington. It was followed by another from Idaho State University.

“People thought he wasn’t fast enough,” said Junior Adams, his position coach at Eastern Washington.

“But you look at his film and you see him separating from guys. His work ethic is phenomenal, and he has excellent hands,” Adams said.

Meanwhile, Ebukam had played almost every position on offense and special teams at David Douglas High School in Portland: running back, fullback, tight end. He even returned punts and kickoffs.

On defense he was a natural “because I could play free and not worry about the rules and be more physical,” he said.

Yet he flew under the recruiting radar, too, until some Eastern coaches spotted him at a summer camp and offered a scholarship. Ebukam’s only other offer came from Portland State.

“We felt like we maybe got a little bit of a steal in recruiting,” former EWU coach Beau Baldwin said, “because he was one of those guys who could have gone to a higher level.”

‘It’s the relationships’The fall of 2012 weighed on Kupp, then a freshman at Eastern.

The previous spring, he’d met Anna Corskrey. She was from Richland and Kupp wanted her to be in his future.

But Croskrey was pursuing her own dreams as a heptathlete at the University of Arkansas.

Apart from practices, the ball was out of Kupp’s hands. Eastern was stocked with veteran receivers including Brandon Kaufman, Nick Edwards and Greg Herd, and opted to redshirt their promising freshman.

“I remember halfway through the season, thinking, ‘I just want to play,’ ” Kupp said. “But I did everything I could to learn from these guys.”

His first game as an Eagle was the 2013 opener at Oregon State: five catches for 119 yards and two touchdowns in an upset of the No. 25 team in the country at the time.

By the summer of 2015, Kupp had married Anna and was on the way to becoming one of the greatest players in Eastern history. He also won the Walter Payton Award as the outstanding player in the Football Championship Subdivision.

When his career ended in 2016, Kupp was the most prolific receiver in college football history, with 428 catches and 73 touchdowns in a four-year career. Kupp also had 6,464 receiving yards, the most in college football history.

Intentionally or not, Kupp was at his best against the big schools that had overlooked him in high school. In four games against OSU, Washington, Oregon and Washington State, he caught 40 passes for 716 yards and 19 touchdowns.

But those numbers always seemed secondary for Kupp.

“School and football are great, but it’s the relationships that have made it special for us,” he said.

Those relationships were deep enough to compel Kupp to stick around for a fifth year when most players would have left.

The naturalUnlike most true freshman linemen, Ebukam played immediately in the fall of 2013.

“Honestly, I didn’t know what redshirting meant,” Ebukam said. “I figured that if I’m going to play, I might as well do my best.”

Ebukam caught the fans’ attention midway through the 2013 season. Southern Utah was backed up near its goal line early in a scoreless game when the quarterback threw downfield.

Ebukam, fast enough to drop into coverage, intercepted the ball and returned it for a 21-yard touchdown.

Ebukam ended that season as a second-team freshman All-America after playing in all 15 games.

“He came in here with a lot of tools,” Baldwin said during Ebukam’s senior year in 2016. “But he takes every offseason and every summer and works to keep getting better mentally and physically.

“He’s become that difference-maker because of the extra things he does.”

Months of working, waitingFor Kupp, life moved swiftly after his collegiate career.

An enigma to many in the NFL, he impressed at his first test, the Senior Bowl in January 2017. Game speed, they call it, and Kupp always had it.

“I trust in who I am, I know the passion I was given for this game and I believe I had earned the privilege to compete,” Kupp said after the game.

“So I stepped on the field free of any weight and just enjoyed the game I love,” Kupp said.

But at the NFL combine in Indianapolis, he caused jaws to drop for the wrong reason. His time of 4.62 seconds in the 40-yard dash was described as “glacial” by some reporters.

But as the NFL draft approached, Kupp had established himself as a midround pick.

Meanwhile, Ebukam stayed in Cheney, working out and hoping for the best.

Labeled by some as a “tweener,” he was a sleeper in the runup to the draft.

Ebukam impressed scouts at every NFL stop.

Ebukam’s biggest day came at home, on Eastern’s red turf.

With two dozen scouts watching on pro day, Ebukam ran a 4.45-second 40-yard dash and came up with a 130-inch standing broad jump. He also managed 24 reps at 225 pounds in the bench press.

Not surprisingly, Ebukam’s stock rose.

From NFL.com: “Attacks the edge with plus burst and has the desire to keep working when he gets punched and controlled early. … Drawn to the play like a magnet … lauded for intelligence and work ethic.”

There it was again, the ability to dig a little deeper for a dream. Would it be enough?

Draft day 2017With his selection all but assured, Cooper and the extended Kupp family watched the televised draft from a beach house in Newport Beach, California.

Picked by the Rams in the third round, Cooper, with Anna, met some of the coaches the next day.

That same morning, Ebukam was sitting in the family living room in Portland and watching the fourth round of the draft

It was an exercise of curiosity more than self-interest, Ebukam figured. The sixth round – that would be his time. He didn’t dare hope for more.

Suddenly, Ebukam’s cellphone buzzed. It was the Rams. The conversation had just begun when Ebukam’s name flashed on the screen.

“I can’t put this into words,” Ebukam said. “I had no idea this was going to happen.”

Moments later, he got a text message from Kupp, who was drafted the night before by the same team.

The text from Kupp was predictable: “Time to go to work.”

But when you love the game this much, it hardly seems like work. Ebukam would now be chasing quarterbacks while making about $2 million a year.

Ebukam’s first move that day was to tell his mom to quit her job.

“She deserves that,” Ebukam said.

Teammates againThe reaction was mixed in mid-July as Kupp and Ebukam arrived at the Rams rookie camp in Irvine, California.

A dozen reporters were scratching the surface as they lobbed the same questions Kupp has heard for years.

The biggest one: How did he go from being an overlooked high school wide receiver to a third-round NFL draft pick?

A month earlier, Kupp had signed a four-year, $3.83 million contract with a signing bonus of $954,760.

More questions followed: Was he worth it? And where the heck is Cheney?

It’s all about dreams, Kupp replied. “It’s not worth doing anything if you don’t want to be the best at it.”

Ebukam was there too, though barely noticed by the media.

“All the work I’ve put in has finally paid off,” said Ebukam, freshly arrived from the airport and wearing a bright-red EWU visor.

“If you really want something you have to go out and get it – there’s no silver spoon.”

Many hours of hard work lay ahead for a player seen as unpolished; it didn’t help that Ebukam hadn’t played linebacker.

“That’s what the coaches are telling me: Get into the playbook so you don’t have to think out on the field,” Ebukam said.

“If you think too much, you get slowed down,” Ebukam said.

Rising above the doubtsSince 2017, Kupp has exceeded expectations and become perhaps the best slot receiver in the NFL.

A torn ACL in 2018 cost him a chance to play in Super Bowl 53. Ebukam saw some action at linebacker, but the Rams lost to New England 13-3.

Kupp came back better in 2019, and the following summer signed a three-year, $48 million contract extension with the Rams, including $35.1 million guaranteed.

He finished the 2020 season with 92 receptions for 974 receiving yards – numbers that justified the contract.

Last spring, the Rams traded for Stafford, whose connection on the field with Kupp was instantaneous.

“We have breakfast together and watch film,” Kupp said.

What followed was among the greatest statistical receiving seasons in NFL history: 145 catches, 1,947 yards, and 16 touchdowns, leading the league in all three categories.

His 1,965 yards from scrimmage were the most in an NFL season by a wide receiver.

And yet the only number recently posted to his 91,000 Twitter follows is a plea for donations toward a goal of $10,000 to buy coats for needy children.

That Twitter page is as unpretentious as Kupp, with the main photo taken during Senior Day at Eastern in 2016.

But the dreams haven’t changed. He just wants the ball.