Everyone will remember Cooper Kupp’s game-winning touchdown and Aaron Donald’s fourth-down pressure as the plays that decided Super Bowl LVI. But there was another key play that sometimes gets forgotten.
On fourth-and-1 from the Rams’ 30-yard line with only 5 minutes left in the game and Cincinnati leading 20-16, Sean McVay gambled. He called a jet sweep to Kupp, which picked up 7 yards and the first down, keeping the game-winning drive alive.
It looked like a smoothly run play, but it wasn’t always clean in practice leading up to the game. Kupp revealed to USA TODAY Sports that the Rams had issues with that play in practice, but that didn’t cause McVay to lose trust in Kupp and Matthew Stafford to get the job done.
Super Bowl LVI MVP @CooperKupp revealed how one iconic play from the Rams' game winning Super Bowl drive was a disaster at times during practice. pic.twitter.com/S02sJ6dlSd
— USA TODAY Sports (@usatodaysports) June 21, 2022
“It was definitely something that I think in that moment, if you don’t get that, you turn the ball back over on the 34-yard line, that’s going to be a tough situation for us as a team to overcome,” Kupp said. “It’s a play that caused a lot of consternation, as Sean would say, because there was a lot of moving parts going on. It’s figuring out all the snap counts, you’re on the silent (snap count), the stadium is loud, trying to figure out how you’re going to time this whole thing up. We fumbled it like once or twice during the week where we just weren’t getting the snap-to-hand off situation. We were having some issues with it. Going into it, Matthew and I talked, we came to Sean at the end of the week, and we’re like, ‘Hey, I know you want to call this play. Matthew and I have it figured out. We can get it done.’ And then we didn’t actually even run it again until that moment there where we ran it on that fourth down.”
Here’s a look at the play, if you don’t remember how it turned out.
Rams convert on 4th and 1 with @CooperKupp. #RamsHouse
📺: #SBLVI on NBC
📱: https://t.co/K02y40b5Nu pic.twitter.com/thWJjbHjru— NFL (@NFL) February 14, 2022
Kupp said when the play was called, he and Stafford looked at each other and made sure they remembered what they talked about with their cues and how they could make it work. Ultimately, they pulled it off and drove down the field for the game-winning touchdown, which was also a Stafford-to-Kupp connection.
