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Rams' Cooper Kupp Falls Short of Calvin Johnson's Single-Season NFL Receiving Record
January 10, 2022
Los Angeles Rams star Cooper Kupp came up short in his quest to set a new single-season record for receiving yards.
The 28-year-old needed 136 yards against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday to pass the mark of 1,964 set by Calvin Johnson in 2012. He finished with 118.
Coming into Sunday, Kupp had the fifth-most receiving yards in a season (1,829). His 138 receptions were the third-most in NFL history, behind only Michael Thomas (149 in 2019) and Marvin Harrison (143 in 2002).
As impressive as the Eastern Washington product's season has been, though, there is an important caveat that comes with it: He had an extra game to set the record thanks to the NFL expanding the regular season to 18 weeks.
By Kupp's own admission, records that get broken under the current format should come with an asterisk.
"We're in a new age of football here," he told reporters Tuesday. "We're playing 17 games of football a year, and a lot of the stuff that happened before that, those records hold a different weight, being that they were played in those 16 games."
Regardless of how Kupp's season is put in the context of an additional game, there's no denying how impactful he has been for a Rams team that has Super Bowl aspirations.
