But it was at that point where I think he decided that he’s gonna really get after it and get in the weight room and transform his body.” “He was stretching for a first down, he reached the ball out and the pile landed on his shoulder, broke his shoulder. “When he was a freshman in high school, he was really super skinny and small,” Craig said.
#MUSIC AN APPRECIATION NINTH EDITION PRO#
“I think back things I could have done differently, and decisions that I made, and things that I should have worked on instead of working on other things, I got those kind of questions,” Craig said, “but it does give me an appreciation for what it takes at the pro level, which makes it even more special to see what Cooper’s doing.”Īfter Jake Kupp and Craig Kupp, there is Cooper Kupp. He wound up with the Phoenix Cardinals, and played in one NFL game (3-for-7, 23 yards) in 1991. Parcells decided to bring in the more experienced Matt Cavanaugh and encouraged Craig when he was released. He commanded a presence.” Craig Kupp’s brother Randy, Craig, Cooper and Jake. And I looked over my left shoulder, Lawrence Taylor had just walked in the room. “I remember sitting at my locker facing out away from my locker, and I could just tell something in the room had changed,” Craig said.
He praises Simms for helping him and recalls seeing Lawrence Taylor in the locker room after he had ended his summer holdout. “I had to run laps around the practice field the rest of that practice before I could rejoin the team,” Craig said. “I remember one time I was warming up and he goes, ‘Craig, your key is you need to block out 95 percent of the stuff I tell you, and you’re going to be just fine,’” Craig said.Īnd when he threw an interception one day in practice and made no attempt to make the tackle? Bill Parcells was looking for a developmental quarterback behind Phil Simms and Jeff Hostetler. I threw a really nice deep ball.”īut he was a project. The Giants drafted him in the fifth round of the 1990 draft.
“Archie Manning was my favorite quarterback when I was a little kid,” Craig said. “He would go out in the backyard and punt to himself for hours and hours,” Jake recalled.Ĭraig was a late bloomer and bounced from Montana Tech to Yakima CC to Pacific Lutheran. “People would ask me what I was going to be when I grew up. “I was in third grade when my dad retired with the Saints,” Craig said. He played until 1975 and was inducted into the Saints Hall of Fame and named to the franchise’s 25th, 40th and 50th anniversary teams.īefore Cooper Kupp, there was Jake Kupp’s son Craig, a kid from Saleh, Wa., born in 1967. Archie was probably a lot more mature than I was at 31, and he was 21.” Roberts wanted somebody that was mature and in the league for a while to be his roommate,” Jake said, and then chuckled. The Saints made Archie Manning the second-overall pick of the 1971 draft. (From left to right) Craig Kupp, Cooper, Cooper’s brother Kobe and Jake. He played two years there, then one season as a tight end in Washington under Otto Graham before being selected in the 1967 expansion draft by the Saints. “I weighed 229 pounds as an offensive guard, and the first guy that I ever played against was Roosevelt Grier at 314 pounds,” he said. “He probably was the brightest, smartest coach that I played with in my career,” Jake said. Jake Kupp, a kid from Sunnyside, Wa., wound up being drafted as a tight end in the ninth round in 1964 NFl Draft by the Tom Landry Cowboys before they moved him to guard. We had a peach tree out in front of our yard, and in the summertime on a hot day I’d go out and lay underneath that peach tree and just dream what it was gonna be like to be a New York Yankee.” “We didn’t have any major league teams in the state of Washington. “When I was in the fifth grade, I was dreaming of being a baseball player,” Jake told Serby Says. Mel Kiper dishes on underwhelming 2022 quarterback draft class and beyond Steelers’ star has so much more to accomplish: ‘Leave my mark on this game’ How the NFL’s best running back turned himself into an MVP front runner