Kupp enjoying this new chapter

From Rams star to Seahawks mentor, receiver is ready for L.A. return

- BY SAM FARMER

COOPER KUPP waved goodbye to L.A. after 8 1/2 years. Now he's back to face the Rams. "I've spent countless hours preparing to beat that team," he said.

(Steph Chambers Getty Images)

Read and react. That isn’t just what Cooper Kupp does on the football field, adjusting his pass route to get open.

It’s what he does in his free time too, tearing through close to two dozen books during the NFL season.

The Seattle Seahawks receiver, once a star with the Rams, is an enthusiastic reader of both nonfiction and fiction and buys extra copies of some of his favorites — “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “When Breath Becomes Air” — to hand out to friends.

Just as when he’s poring over the playbook, the bearded bookworm reads with pen in hand or ready to note something on his phone.

“If I haven’t underlined anything in the first day or two, it’s hard to keep going,” said Kupp, currently reading “Heart and Steel” by former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher. “I mark pages, highlight, screenshot.

COOPER KUPP has been welcomed home in his return to Washington, where he was raised, but still is adjusting after years in L.A. "This is where I grew up, my wife's home, but it's not where our home was," he said.

(JANE GERSHOVICH Getty Images)

“If I'm not learning something, a book better transport me.”