Turns out the hamstring injury Cooper Kupp sustained wasn’t in the normal variety, per the words from Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay on Wednesday, September 6.
The head coach, now entering season seven when the Rams open the 2023 season on Sunday, September 10 against the Seattle Seahawks, revealed that from what he gathered, Kupp’s injury sounds worse than originally thought.
“It wasn’t the normal thing and there’s a lot of gray behind this,” McVay said to the L.A. media. “I’m not a doctor, so I can’t really answer anything more about that. I just know that it doesn’t follow the standard protocol for when you’re reaggravating a soft tissue injury, trying to continue to get a grasp on exactly what it is so that he can get back to feeling like the Cooper that we know and love, and hopefully we’ll do that.”
McVay Rolls Out ‘Plan’ for Kupp
Is placing Kupp on injured reserve on the table for McVay and the Rams?
“As far as what that plan looks like, there’s a lot of information that goes way above my head that they’ve talked about,” McVay said. “I think there’ll be some things that from a rehab procedure approach that he’ll start to implement, but it wasn’t like there was any sort of groundbreaking information when I sat down and got a chance to speak with Cooper this morning.”
In the event the Rams do place Kupp on IR, it could mean missing the entire month of September. And the first month for a Rams team trying to improve from their 5-12 season of a year ago is a challenging one:
Week 1: Again, the Rams hit the road to face a Seahawks team that not only was in the playoffs last season, but look like the biggest threat to dethrone last year’s division champs. Plus, Bobby Wagner is back on the opposite side.
Week 2: The Rams home opener is against the reigning NFC West champs and bitter rival the San Francisco 49ers — who will more than likely now have Nick Bosa back now that he’s on his $170 million extension.
Week 3: The Rams have their Super Bowl 56 rematch with the Cincinnati Bengals on the road for Monday Night Football. And this time, Ex-Rams safety Nick Scott is a Bengal.
McVay Shares Confidence Level in Remaining WR Group
This obviously won’t be the first time Kupp will be without the Rams. And it won’t be the first time McVay has had to create game plans that didn’t involve No. 9.
But as for the guys not named Kupp, McVay is highly optimistic that group will produce on Sunday.
“You wish he was able to go, but I got a lot of confidence in the guys,” McVay said.
And as it turns out, the Rams had been preparing for the possibility of not having Kupp on the field.
“This is something that we probably thought was going to be the situation for a while now so this isn’t anything new to us, but rather just put it to bed, not have to continue to answer questions,” McVay said. “We want to be able to get Cooper back when he’s ready to go and in the meantime a lot of guys have been able to get a great chance to be able to develop, establish a rapport with Matthew (Stafford) and the rest of the group and looking forward to watching these guys compete on Sunday.”
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Rams’ Sean McVay Reveals Cooper Kupp’s Injury Wasn’t ‘Normal’