In wide receiver Cooper Kupp's first press conference after signing with the Seahawks, he said it was "difficult" to leave the Rams and felt there was "not a ton of clarity" from his former team about their decision to move on without him.
Rams head coach Sean McVay responded to Kupp's comments from the league meetings in Palm Beach on Tuesday. McVay said it was a "challenging conversation" with Kupp when they told him that they would release him if they were unable to find a trade partner, but that he felt that gave the wideout clarity about "this is the direction that we’re gonna go" even if the total context of that decision took time to come together.
"We thought Davante Adams would be a possibility," McVay said, via TheAthletic.com. "We don’t know, you know, he’s going to have other interests. There was a possibility we were gonna re-sign Tutu Atwell, but we didn’t know at the time. I think the most important thing was when we had made the decision that we were gonna seek a trade or at least grant him his release, that was very quickly after the season, which I thought he deserved that clarity in regard to the direction we were going. Now, exactly why all those things occurred, there had to be a little bit of time to be able to provide the appropriate context. That wasn’t applicable in the moment.”
The difference between clarity and context may be a semantic one, but the underlying message that the Rams sent with their wide receiver moves was the same either way. That message was that they saw a brighter offensive future without Kupp than they saw with him and the coming season will provide clarity about whether that was the right choice.
