If asking any Seahawks player or coach about Cooper Kupp, they will rave about how much the veteran receiver has meant to the team since signing as a free agent last spring.

If you knew nothing of Kupp or this Seahawks' season and just looked up Kupp's stats, it would look like one of the quieter seasons of his career. Through 12 games with his new team, Kupp has 36 catches for 473 yards and two touchdowns on 53 targets. He has been very effective when targeted, turning 21 of those 36 receptions into first downs, but with the Seahawks ranking 31st in the league in pass attempts, and with Jaxon Smith-Njigba taking up a lot of those targets in his standout season, Kupp hasn't seen the ball come his way nearly as often as he did during his peak years with the Rams.

But Kupp has been around the NFL long enough and played on enough successful teams, including a 2021 Rams squad that won the Super Bowl, to know that a player's stats don't tell the whole story when it comes to their impact on the team.

"I'm executing the things I'm asked to do over and over again," Kupp said. "I feel like I'm coming in here on Monday and feeling good about what is being on tape, what am I being asked to do and how well am I executing and am I competing for the guys around me. And that's all I can do. It's fun when you're a part of a group that you got guys that want to play for each other. You got guys that at the end of the day want to walk off that field with a win at the end of the day. I get to be a part of that, and going to do everything I can day in and day out to make sure that I'm a positive piece of things. Whatever is asked of me, whatever that is, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to go out there and find a way to get it done."

And that attitude Kupp described isn't just part of what makes him such a valuable part of the team; it also is a key to the entire team's success. Aside from the Sam Darnold to Smith-Njigba connection in the passing game, which has seen the third-year receiver lead the NFL in receiving yards for almost the entire season, the Seahawks don't have a ton of players putting up monstrous individual numbers.

The Seahawks run the ball at a high rate, but Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet have split carries and playing time pretty evenly throughout the season. On defense, the Seahawks have one of the league's best pass rushes, totaling 41 sacks, with 17 different players recording at least half a sack, but no one player is among the league leaders, with Leonard Williams and Byron Murphy II leading the team with 7.0 apiece.

"There is a lot of stuff in this game that isn't going to show up in the stat book, stuff that isn't going to be seen in the box score," Kupp said. "I would say probably actually like 75 percent of the stuff that gets done on the football field doesn't show up in the stat book. How well can you dominate that 75 percent of the game that everyone else might pass by? We've got a lot of guys that take a lot pride in that, take pride in blocking for the guys around them. Running your route precisely and knowing that your route isn't always about you getting open, your route is about pulling coverage and distributing the field; running backs being able to pick up blitzes and trusting their tracks and setting up blocks. There are so many things in this game that are pivotal to the game. They're the essential parts of this game. We've got guys that take that serious, and that's why you've seen success… You want to know the reason is things don't go the way they're supposed to? It's in the details. In the details that only the guys in this room that are getting coached on it for 40, 50 hours a week to be able to understand what they are, it's those guys that understand what needs to get done. We've got guys that take that very seriously."

It may sound like an obvious thing that having unselfish players can lead to team success, but that isn't as easy to bring to life as it is to simply talk about. Big stats lead to accolades and awards, they lead to more media attention, and most importantly in a sport with relatively short careers, those numbers can lead to bigger contracts.

So as much as every team might go into a season wanting to have a 53-man roster and a practice squad full of people who want to play for each other, that's not always what actually happens. But it's something this Seahawks team has been able to use as one of its key traits on its way to a 10-3 record.

"For you to be a good team—the good teams in this league do that stuff," Kupp said. "The bad teams don't. Point blank, period. You can do all the other stuff you want to do, whatever. All your analysis of all different things. It's the guys that do the things that don't show up in the stat book at a very high level, those teams have opportunities to play meaningful games at this point in the year. Yeah, without a doubt that's a common denominator all the way through."

Quarterback Sam Darnold has been on some really good teams in his career, as well as some not so successful ones, and he sees the same thing as Kupp when it comes to this team's unselfish play.

"There are a lot of guys that don't care about stats," Darnold said. "They just want to win. That's all of our guys on this team. It's very rare, but it's something special about this team, like Coop mentioned. But there are a ton of them. The one group that sticks out to me with that is the offensive line, right, because I feel like the only time they get any type of attention is when it's bad. Whether it's a false start, the announcer is calling their name, and then sacks, those show up on the stat sheet. There is nothing that really shows up -- unless it's a big running game and you don't have any sacks on the game, but there is nothing really where they get like a ton of praise. So I think those guys' just unselfishness in that room is unlike any other."

That it was Kupp leading the conversation about the team's selflessness this week seems fitting for those who have been around him this season. Again, he isn't lighting up the stat sheet on a weekly basis, but whether it is his blocking or the routes he runs when the ball isn't finding him or the plays he makes when the ball does, Kupp is still a huge part of the offense's success, and the impact he has on the team throughout the week is an equally big factor.

"I would say any winning team you've ever been on, you have the unselfish individuals that make up the sum of the parts," offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak said. "I think Coop epitomizes that, he's the ultimate teammate, ultimate unselfish guy. When your best players are guys like him, the young guys follow suit, the coaches follow suit, and it just becomes part of the culture."