WATCH: Matthew Stafford loses his cool after Bengals player hits Cooper Kupp during Super Bowl 2022
Matthew Stafford is usually a rather cool cucumber. However, if someone attacks his teammate aggressively, he is willing to drop the hammer.
Typically, a quarterback's teammates usually need to defend them, but in this situation, the Rams' signal-caller was the one stepping up for one of his teammates.
Pissed off Matthew Stafford π³π³π³ https://t.co/yLHl0wPG5l
A video clip posted on Twitter shows the quarterback getting in the face of Vonn Bell, the player who he thought was a bit too rough on his top receiver Cooper Kupp. In the video, Stafford throws a deep pass into the corner of the endzone. He sees something from Kupp's defender, which doesn't please him. In response, he sprints about 20 yards up the field to intervene.
"You get the **** out of here," Stafford yells to one Bengals player and continues to run towards the endzone. Once there, he yells at Bell, "Hey! That's some... Was that you? Was that you?" He then asks one of the officials, "Was that him?"
The Rams quarterback then starts walking away and checks on Kupp, but decides he isn't done. He returns to Vonn Bell to voice his concerns, essentially telling him that if he messes with Kupp, he messes with Stafford.
"Was that you though?" he asks Bell. "Was that you? That's my teammate, you hear me?"
In the video, Bell doesn't appear to respond to the quarterback.
The reactions to the video varied. Some said the Rams signal-caller didn't do enough. Some said he did all he could without drawing a penalty. The biggest question, however, is why he chose this moment to go after an opponent.
Why did Matthew Stafford defend Cooper Kupp?
This was a case where Cooper Kupp was Stafford's target. So when the quarterback was looking at the ball's flight path, he had no choice but to see what happened to Kupp. While going up for the ball, Kupp was dangerously hit in the helmet as evidenced by the alternate angle shown in the video below.
While it likely wasn't the only helmet-to-helmet hit the quarterback saw this year, it was one he felt he needed to get involved with more than others.
Cooper Kupp will be remembered for his game-winning touchdown.
But he should not have been in the game.
He should've been in the #concussion protocol. 2 plays earlier this flagged helmet-to-helmet hit made him unable, or at best unwilling, to stand up. Bad message for the kids https://t.co/a2G8LAlpny
At this point, Kupp has been a big catalyst for the quarterback's season. Without the wide receiver, the Rams would not have made it as far as they have. The quarterback would not have had the breakout success that he has had. So when he saw his golden goose getting roughed up on the sidelines, he had a stronger reaction.
If something had happened to Kupp in Super Bowl LVI, the Rams would not have won the game. The quarterback knew this, so he reacted more strongly to the potentially dirty hit than if it had happened to other players. He knew that if he got involved, the odds of a penalty increased. However, he also couldn't sit idly by and let the Bengals players think that hitting Kupp with extra force was alright.
Put simply, it was a risk but one that he was willing to take for his best wide receiver.