Tag: Eastern Washington University football

Receiver’s Kupp runneth over

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Quincy Forte was worth a trip to San Luis Obispo in 2013 to see Eastern Washington play Cal Poly. The Vacaville High graduate started at running back for the Eagles, and former Folsom High star Dano Graves played quarterback for the Mustangs. Neither was the most captivating player in the game, however.

Cooper Kupp, an unheralded freshman with Eastern Washington, stole the show in the Eagles’ 35-22 victory. You have probably heard of him by now. Kupp had eight receptions for 139 yards and two touchdowns that day. He averaged 107 receptions and 1,616 receiving yards in each of his four college seasons. He scored 21 touchdowns as a freshman and had 73 in his career.

Cooper Kupp (photo courtesy of Eastern Washington University)

Beau Baldwin was the coach at Eastern Washington during Kupp’s time in Cheney and is now in his third year at Cal Poly after three seasons as the offensive coordinator at Cal. Baldwin is not at all surprised by what Kupp is doing these days, but he does admit it is unusual for a player who was only recruited by Eastern Washington and Idaho State to be setting the NFL on fire.

“(Kupp) was a little bit of a late bloomer. He was an underdeveloped kid,” Baldwin explained. “We had been following him since his sophomore year (at Davis High in Yakima, Wash.). He used to come to our football camps. He hadn’t sprouted yet as a junior, but he made a big jump as a senior.”

Kupp has to rank as a big reason why the Los Angeles Rams will face the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game. The Rams were 0-2 in the regular season against the 49ers even though the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Kupp had 20 receptions for 240 yards and a touchdown in those two games. Those numbers contributed to Kupp becoming just the fourth player in the Super Bowl era to claim the receiving triple crown by leading the league in receptions with 145, receiving yards with 1,947 and receiving touchdowns with 16.

The other players to wear the receiving triple crown were Jerry Rice (1990), Sterling Sharpe (1992) and Steve Smith Sr. (2005). You have surely heard of them. Rice and Sharpe were first-round draft picks by the 49ers in 1985 and Green Bay Packers in 1988, respectively. Smith and Kupp were both drafted in the third round, Smith by the Carolina Panthers in 2001 and Kupp by the Rams in 2017. Smith was discounted because he is just 5-foot-9. Kupp was sold short because Eastern Washington is not a football factory even though the Eagles were the FCS national champions in 2010.

“We had a good tradition,” Baldwin said of his nine seasons at Eastern Washington. “(Kupp) added to that tradition.”

NFL scouts expressed their doubts about Kupp after he was clocked at 4.6 seconds in the 40-yard dash at the 2017NFL Combine. Bucky Brooks, an NFL analyst, said at the time that Kupp would not amount to anything more than a third receiver with any team. Baldwin went to bat for Kupp and came out swinging.

“I got into arguments with scouts, about him,” Baldwin recalled. “You don’t put him in spikes on a track. These aren’t the Spandex Olympics. Put him in football pads and a helmet and see what he can do.”

We have.

Aggies want King to have a ball

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Devon King thought he had scored against Stanford after receovering what he believed to be a latera, but the play was eventually ruled a forward pass.

UC Davis has lost its past five games against Pacific 12 Conference opponents by an average of 34 points.The closest was a 30-10 loss at Stanford in 2018, and that game could have been much closer. The Aggies led 3-0 for nearly seven minutes, and it could have been 10-0 by the time Stanford got on the scoreboard.

Stanford quarter back K.J. Costello had already thrown one interception when UC Davis linebacker Mason Moe pressured him into a wobbly pass midway through the first quarter. Freshman cornerback Devon King alertly scooped the ball on a bounce behind the line of scrimmage and dashed 18 yards to the end zone.

King was immediately mobbed by his teammates, but the celebration did not last long. The referees huddled and ruled Costello’s arm was going forward when the ball left his right hand. That turned what King thought was a lateral into an incomplete pass. The Aggies have been wondering “what if” for nearly a year.. 

“I always think about it,” said King, who was not only referring to his touchdown return being erased. He also bemoaned the opportunity UC Davis squandered to join FCS teams that have upset ranked FBS squads (Stanford was ranked ninth at the time). UC Davis opens Saturday at Cal, but the Bears are not ranked.

FBS schools pay FCS opponents thousands of dollars to supposedly be easy prey. FCS teams take the money and treat the game as a measuring stick against a supposedly superior opponent. King is not buying that. He believes with every braid in his long hair that the Aggies can beat any team on any given Saturday.

“We’re not just going to show up,” King replied when asked how the Aggies can benefit from facing FBS teams. “Our coaches have told us we can win every game we play, so we’re going to play every game to win.”

The 2019 edition of the Aggies is far different from the teams that lost by 52-3 to Cal in 2010, 48-14 to Arizona State in 2011, 45-0 to Stanford and 53-28 to Oregon in 2016. UC Davis is coming off a 10-3 season in which it shared the Big Sky Conference championship and advanced to the FCS playoffs for the first time.

Although it did not count, King’s fumble return against Stanford revealed his ball-hawking ability. His quick thinking was honed in practice by defensive backs coach Cha’pelle Brown, who was a three-year starter in the secondary for UC Davis coach Dan Hawkins when Hawkins was running the show at Colorado.

“Our coach always preaches to us that whenever we see the ball on the ground, pick it up and run with it,” King explained. “It’s something we work on every day in practice – scoop and score. When it happened in the game, it was like repetition.”

King struck again last Oct. 27 at Montana with two fourth-quarter interceptions to seal the Aggies’ comeback from an 18-point deficit for a 49-21 victory. Two weeks later at Eastern Washington, King stripped the ball from wide receiver Terence Grady at the UC Davis 17-yard-line to prevent the Eagles from scoring.

Isaiah Thomas was bailed out by King against Sacramento State in the Causeway Classic a week later. Thomas fumbled on a punt return, and the ball bounced backward to the UC Davis 24-yard line. King somehow navigated through four Sacramento State players to locate the ball and pounce on it. Instead of a turnover, UC Davis took possession and drove 76 yards for a touchdown to lead 35-10 at halftime.

“It’s just awareness and always trying to be around the ball,” King said. “Whenever you run to the ball, good things happen.”