The 18 yards between Cooper Kupp's triple crown and a record

What the receiving triple crown means

A receiver wins the triple crown by leading the NFL in catches, receiving yards and touchdown receptions in the same season. It sounds tidy. In practice the three leaders are usually three different people, because the high-volume slot receiver, the deep threat and the red-zone target are often not the same player.

Since the league began keeping these statistics in 1932, it has happened 17 times, by 13 players. Don Hutson of Green Bay did it five times on his own. Only five receivers have done it since the 1970 merger:

Why his 2021 version stands apart

Margins. The Rams' season-end count had Kupp 22 catches clear of second place, 331 yards clear, and two touchdowns clear. That was an outright sweep, and it was the first outright one since Sterling Sharpe in 1992, because Steve Smith tied for two of his three categories in 2005.

The rest of the file is just as odd. He became the only player to reach 1,900 yards and 16 touchdown catches in one season, and he tied the NFL record with 11 games of 100 yards or more. CBS Sports counted 13 straight games of 90-plus yards, the longest such streak on record. He also fell five catches short of Michael Thomas's single-season record of 149.

Then he kept going. Add the postseason and CBS tallied 178 catches and 2,425 yards, both records for a combined season, capped by the Super Bowl LVI MVP award.

Two Rams, 70 years apart

One of the triple crowns before his belonged to another Ram. Elroy Hirsch swept the categories in 1951 with 66 catches, 1,495 yards and 17 touchdowns. Kupp's 16 touchdown catches in 2021 left him one short of Hirsch's franchise record, according to the Rams, while he broke the club's single-season records for catches and yards. The one franchise mark in his three categories that survived belonged to the only other Ram with a triple crown. I cannot improve on that.

The rookie on the other sideline

Here is the detail we liked best while checking the list. The next receiver to win the triple crown after Kupp was Ja'Marr Chase in 2024, with 127 catches, 1,708 yards and 17 touchdowns. NFL.com called him the youngest to do it in the Super Bowl era, at 24. Three seasons earlier, Chase was a Bengals rookie in Super Bowl LVI. He caught five passes for 89 yards that night while Kupp won the MVP.

And one more coincidence to close the loop. Kupp's first college award, in 2013, was the Jerry Rice Award, given to the best freshman in the FCS. Rice was the first receiver to win the triple crown after the merger. Kupp is now also one of two receivers, with Rice, to own an Offensive Player of the Year award and two Super Bowl titles, a story we follow in our main Cooper Kupp explainer. He got to 1,947 yards. I am fairly sure the 18 he missed are the only ones anyone still brings up.