Cooper Kupp has seen enough of Sam Darnold’s bad days to know what matters is what comes after them. The Seattle Seahawks wide receiver, speaking with reporters this week, put a name on the trait he values most in his quarterback: steadiness.
“It’s an elite trait of his to stay steady to be able to go through the highs and lows of life, of football, and a play,” Kupp said. “His steadiness is an incredible trait.”
The praise lands at a moment when Darnold’s mistakes are impossible to ignore. Since returning from injury in Week 3, Darnold has thrown for 742 yards and seven touchdowns while completing 64.5 percent of his passes across three games. He has also thrown five interceptions in that stretch, and opponents have turned four of them into scores. Those numbers are why the quarterback, head coach Mike Macdonald and offensive coordinator Brian Fleury have spent the short week talking about one thing above all: ball security.
Why Kupp Believes the Huddle Stays Calm
Kupp’s argument is simple. A quarterback who carries the last play into the next huddle spreads that tension to everyone around him. Darnold, in Kupp’s telling, does the opposite.
“When he steps in the huddle, it’s a next play mindset, next opportunity to go out there and play good ball,” Kupp said. “As the guy that’s coming into the huddle, no matter what has happened before, he’s coming in with great energy and excitement to go out there and play efficient ball for that next drive.”
He went further, describing what a locker room feels like when a quarterback broods. “You can’t have anyone lingering. You can’t have anyone holding back because you can feel that stepping up to the line when someone’s still stuck on the play that happened before,” Kupp said. “We’re doing a good job moving forward from those things and we just have to be able to do that consistently.”
That word — consistently — is doing a lot of work. Kupp acknowledged the offense has not put together a complete performance yet this season. “We have flashes of moments of efficiency, moments of explosiveness, and moments of where we’re playing good football,” he said. “Then we also have moments where it’s not good enough. There are mistakes, it’s going backwards, and there are self-inflicted wounds. It’s finding ways to eliminate those and keep things moving forward.”
Darnold: The Mindset Wasn’t Always There
Darnold himself admits the next-play mentality is learned, not natural. “It’s not something I always had,” he said. “Some of the experiences that I’ve had in my life being in the NFL, college, high school, things not going a certain way and learning over time there’s a lot of things out of my control. Having that short term memory and knowing that you can’t change anything in the past is always a good reminder as well.”
The most recent test came on Sunday, when Darnold threw an interception on Seattle’s opening offensive drive. The response was the kind Kupp described: two drives later, the Seahawks were in the end zone.
“For me, it’s easy to overthink things when you’re not having as much success as you’d like,” Darnold said. “A short week makes it a bit different but trust the process and understand that there’s things that I have to do differently on the field. Understand what those mistakes are and not make them again. It’s that simple.”
Fleury’s Fix: Lean on What Darnold Knows
The correction plan is being drawn up by Brian Fleury, in his first season as Seattle’s offensive coordinator. Immediately after the Week 5 loss, Fleury and Darnold sat down to work out how the quarterback could be more decisive with the ball.
The answer, Fleury said, is familiarity. “It’s relying more heavily on plays that we have a lot of experience with both through training camp and through the first couple weeks that he’s comfortable making swift decisions and progressing through,” Fleury said. “We’re going to lean more in that direction.”
That means weekly conversations about the game plan, down to which concepts Darnold likes throwing to which receivers. “It’s just constant communication between the two of us to get to stuff to when the call comes in, he’s like ‘Yeah, absolutely. I know we’re moving the ball on this one,'” Fleury said.
His philosophy is blunt. “Ideally, you want to focus on what you do well. I think that’s a formula for success with anything.”
Kupp has also spoken publicly about the offense under Fleury, sharing his observations of the unit in its first season running the new coordinator’s system — a sign the players are being asked to help shape the fix, not just execute it.
Turnovers, and the Cost of Them
Darnold does not sugarcoat what the interceptions have meant. Opponents have scored on four of his five picks since Week 3, a swing that can decide games on its own.
“Anytime you control the turnovers, everything else gets better,” he said. “That’s the thing that we’re focused on, taking care of the football. That’s the main thing that we’re focused on but at the same time, we’re going to continue to play fast as well.”
The balance matters. A quarterback who becomes timid trying to protect the ball creates a different problem, and Darnold insists that is not the plan. Decisiveness, trusting his reads and trusting his feet — those are the things he says he can control.
A Short Week, and a Sense of Urgency
Thursday’s game compresses everything. There is less time to install, less time to correct, and no room for the self-inflicted wounds Kupp described.
“For us, there’s a sense of urgency,” Darnold said. “That term, that phrase, ‘sense of urgency,’ has been thrown around a lot the last couple of days and it’s true. There needs to be a sense of urgency to get better and have ball security. I’m going to continue to be as decisive as I can be and go through my reads and trust what I see, trust my feet, all those things. Can’t have turnovers. You have to protect the football in this league. If you don’t, you’ll pay.”
That last line is the whole story of Seattle’s season so far, in the quarterback’s own words. The talent around Darnold — Kupp among them — has produced the flashes. The turnovers have produced the frustration. Fleury’s game plans, built around the plays Darnold trusts most, are the coaching staff’s bet that familiarity breeds decisiveness.
Kupp, for his part, is betting on the man taking the snap. A quarterback who walks into the huddle with energy no matter what just happened, the receiver argues, is worth more than any single statistic suggests. The next few weeks will show whether that steadiness, paired with a leaner, more familiar playbook, is enough to turn flashes into full games.
FAQ
What did Cooper Kupp say about Sam Darnold?
Kupp called Darnold’s steadiness “an elite trait,” saying the quarterback enters the huddle with a next-play mindset and great energy no matter what happened on the previous drive, and that the offense cannot afford anyone lingering on past mistakes.
How has Sam Darnold played since returning from injury?
Since returning in Week 3, Darnold has thrown for 742 yards and seven touchdowns with a 64.5 percent completion rate over three games, but he has also thrown five interceptions, four of which opponents converted into scores.
What is offensive coordinator Brian Fleury doing to fix the turnovers?
After the Week 5 loss, Fleury and Darnold began working on making Darnold more decisive by leaning heavily on plays he knows well from training camp and the first weeks of the season, with constant communication about which concepts he is most comfortable running and to which receivers.