Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp enjoying settling in with new team

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Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp enjoying settling in with new team

2025-06-12 08:12 Last Updated At：08:32

RENTON, Wash. (AP) — When it comes to food recommendations in the Seattle area, new Seahawks wide receiver Cooper Kupp is open to suggestions.

Just not from fellow newcomer and quarterback Sam Darnold.

The veteran quarterback invited Kupp to get dinner with him earlier this offseason, and some of the suggestions caught the 31-year-old wide receiver off guard when recalling the night after the first of two minicamp practices at Virginia Mason Athletic Center, which concluded Wednesday.

“The way he came off was he wanted to go get some fries and chicken strips,” Kupp said on Tuesday. “Look, I have a 6-year-old. I can bring you his food. I can bring that, and I’ll go eat something good. It ended up being fine. He ventured out and was, like, OK. He was at least willing to try some stuff. I may have misread him. We’ll see. Time will tell.”

Time will also tell how well Kupp fits in with a new franchise after spending each of the past eight seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and signing a three-year, $45 million contract with the Seahawks in March. In some ways it’s a homecoming for Kupp, who grew up watching the Seahawks, is from Yakima, Washington and played at Eastern Washington.

He still has plenty to acclimate to, though, after all that time with an NFC West rival. Kupp referred to joining a new team as “exciting.”

“It’s been a long time since I learned a new offense, a long time since I sat in a meeting and had to put a face on the board and what’s this guy’s name?” Kupp said. “That’s a stressful situation. That’s a high-stress situation. It’s good, though. I’m excited about what we’re doing, and it is fun.”

He’s eager to work with new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, whose system has some similarities to what is run by the Rams and their coach, Sean McVay, as well as San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan and his scheme. Kubiak was the 49ers passing game coordinator in 2023 when Darnold was also with the team.

“There’s going to be the nuances here and there, things like that, but a lot of similar stuff, a lot of similar ideas in how you’re attacking a defense,’’ Kupp said. “I believe in this offense and what it takes to make it successful and the detail that’s involved with it. … There’s definitely some stuff that accentuates the things that I’ve done in the past.’’

All Kupp has done in the past is produce — and more recently, struggle a bit to stay on the field. Each of the past three seasons, Kupp has failed to play in more than 12 games, which in part led the Rams to let the Super Bowl 56 MVP leave in free agency.

Kupp said that he felt good physically, and he looked the part each day of minicamp when running routes. He faces quite the task in adding to a receiver room that is paced by third-year wideout Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who is fresh off his first 1,000-yard season.

Veteran receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling is also on the team, and he spent half of last season playing under Kubiak when the latter was the New Orleans Saints’ offensive coordinator. Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald has been impressed by both wideouts’ approaches to learning Seattle’s offense.

“They’re attacking every day, man,” Macdonald said. “Just trying to master the playbook, all the formations, all the route steps, all the timing. If you have that spirit about you every day, I mean, it’s contagious, one, with the rest of the room, with the rest of the offense, the whole team. It makes it fun to go to work and enjoy the process. But, of course, that’s going to expedite your growth when you have guys like that.”

Still, Kupp recognizes he has much learning to do between now and when the Seahawks open their season on Sept. 7 against the 49ers. It’s in part why he’s already spent a bunch of time in Macdonald’s office picking his brain.

Kupp has enjoyed settling in with a new team and that the internal belief is what has resonated with him most.

“For any of this stuff to work, for all the goals and all the things we want to set out to achieve, it’s the understanding that we’re going to ultimately achieve it together,” Kupp said. “It’s going to be playing for each other. … Man, what can I do to be better for the guy next to me? This is a place that guys embody that, and they believe it. I think that makes it a fun place to come into, a fun place to come work.”

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Hennepin County prosecutor calls on the public to share Renee Good shooting evidence with her office

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Friday called on members of the public to send any video or other evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good directly to her office, challenging the Trump administration's decision to leave the investigation solely to the FBI.

Moriarty said that although her office has collaborated effectively with the FBI in past cases, she is concerned by the Trump administration's decision to bar state and local agencies from playing any role in the investigation into Wednesday's killing of Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.

She also said that despite the Trump administration’s insistence that the officer who shot Good has complete legal immunity, that isn’t the case.

“We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case,” she said at a news conference. “It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent.”

Moriarty said her office would post a link for the public to submit footage of the shooting, even though she acknowledged that she wasn't sure what legal outcome submissions might produce.

The prosecutor's announcement came on a third day of Minneapolis protests over Good's killing and a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.

Good's wife, Becca Good, released a statement to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday saying, “kindness radiated out of her.”

"On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns," Becca Good said.

“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him,” she wrote. “That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”

The reaction to the Good's shooting was immediate in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of protesters converging on the shooting scene and the school district canceling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.

On Thursday night, hundreds marched in freezing rain down one of Minneapolis’ major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ice off our streets." And on Friday, protesters were out again demonstrating outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown that began Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Authorities erected barricades outside the facility Friday.

City workers, meanwhile, removed makeshift barricades made of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets near the scene of Good's shooting. Officials said they would leave up a shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three.

The Portland shootings happened outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. Federal immigration officers shot and wounded a man and woman, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Venezuela nationals Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, who were inside a vehicle, and their conditions weren't immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed. Hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building. Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking the to get out of a street to allow traffic to flow.

Just as it did following Good's shooting, DHS defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties and who was involved in a recent shooting tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn't immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good's was.

The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.

The government is also shifting immigration officers to Minneapolis from sweeps in Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. This represents a pivot, as the Louisiana crackdown that began in December had been expected to last into February.

Good's death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests happening in other places, including Texas, California, Detroit and Missouri.

In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, a woman held a sign that said, “Stop Trump’s Gestapo,” as hundreds of people marched to the White House. Protesters in Pflugerville, Texas, north of Austin, banged on the walls of an ICE facility. And a man in Los Angeles burned an American flag in front of federal detention center.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defense and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.

But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying videos show the self-defense argument is “garbage.”

Several bystanders captured footage of Good's killing, which happened in a neighborhood south of downtown.

The recordings show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

It is not clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.

The federal agent who fatally shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and ICE, according to records obtained by AP.

Noem has not publicly named him, but a Homeland Security spokesperson said her description of his injuries last summer refers to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, in which court documents identify him as Jonathan Ross.

Ross got his arm stuck in the window of a vehicle whose driver was fleeing arrest on an immigration violation. Ross was dragged and fired his Taser. A jury found the driver guilty of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

Attempts to reach Ross, 43, at phone numbers and email addresses associated with him were not successful.

Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis; Ed White in Detroit; Valerie Gonzalez in Brownsville, Texas; Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Jim Mustian and Safiyah Riddle in New York; Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.