Spotlight on Puka Nacua intensifies as questions about Rams' star receiver evolve
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Nate Atkins
On the field, he's a two-time Pro Bowler who entered Week 17 as the league leader in catches. Off the field, he's less predictable.
WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — Los Angeles Rams star receiver Puka Nacua ran a deep post route from the slot into free grass in zone coverage, hopped to catch a pass from Matthew Stafford and raced 41 yards to the end zone.
It should have been the finishing touch on a monstrous performance and the game-winning touchdown in overtime in a battle for the NFC’s No. 1 seed. But the Seattle Seahawks came back, scored and went for two and the win. And then he sent a tweet.
The questions began from there, both to coach Sean McVay and within the Rams’ organization after a game and a week from Nacua that packed so many highs and lows into one. A fantastic player remains completely unpredictable from snap to snap, stream to stream and tweet to tweet.
It leaves a question that many are left to ponder: Who exactly is Puka Nacua?
Years before Nacua would become the NFL’s leading receiver and the center of conversations about a livestream and the multiple distractions and controversies it created, the Rams’ scouting staff stumbled upon a rugged college wideout fighting a perceived lack of elite speed. After growing up in Las Vegas and then Provo, Utah, Nacua played for the University of Washington for two years largely because of a connection with then-receivers coach Junior Adams, who had success placing another receiver into the league from Eastern Washington named Cooper Kupp.
Between his senior year of high school and senior year of college, Nacua went from committing to USC to flipping to Washington to transferring to BYU to live in Provo again. He was a young man trying to find himself on and off the field, which for so long has been about emulating the biggest influences in his life, his three older brothers. Isaiah, Kai and Samson all played at BYU. Eventually, Nacua followed in their tracks and produced 1,430 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns across two seasons to reach NFL radars.
By the time the Rams drafted him in the fifth round in 2023, they had done research on him on and off the field. Like all teams, they scrutinized less about a Day 3 pick. They had what appeared to be the perfect infrastructure for a physical, catch-eating machine who played with reckless abandon in hopes of overcoming his lack of traditional speed. They had a coach in McVay and a quarterback in Stafford who could advance the development and learning process of a rookie. And they had a leader in the receiving corps in Kupp, who once helped dictate one of Nacua’s biggest life choices.
In playing away from his brothers for the first time since his stint as a backup at Washington, Nacua leaned on Kupp like his Rams version of an older brother. Kupp once took a similar path to the Rams, catching on as a physical catch-eating force developed by Coach Adams into a third-round draft pick into McVay’s offense. But he moved differently. Kupp was notoriously quiet on social media, and his appearances on podcasts and videos were carefully selected and often produced by his team.
Early on, Nacua did exactly as the Rams hoped for and looked up to Kupp in his words and actions, as he demonstrated
“You can tell a lot about a person based on the questions they ask,” Kupp, now a receiver for the Seahawks, said last week. “Puka was asking the right kind of questions. He was asking intent questions, the questions that make plays come alive. I could tell he had a great feel for the game. He played strong.
“A lot of it was being there and letting him know I’m an open book. As the season went on, the relationship we built with the time we spent together as we’d have those conversations and being able to spend more time together, it just grew into this natural thing where it’s a friendship.”
Puka Nacua looked up to Cooper Kupp when first entering the league as a fifth-round draft pick. (Harry How / Getty Images)
Right from his very first NFL game, Nacua exploded in ways he never quite did as a college player. With Kupp sidelined with a hamstring injury to begin the 2023 season, Nacua proved he didn’t need another star receiver drawing coverage away. He debuted with a 10-catch, 119-yard game against the Seahawks and finished the season with 105 receptions for a rookie-record 1,486 yards and six touchdowns while being named to the Pro Bowl.
Fame and attention can bring positives and challenges in a social media-driven world for a Gen Z athlete, and Nacua saw elements of both. He and his branding team have appeared to rarely say no to marketing opportunities — and with Nacua’s sudden stardom, there have been many coming his way.
The Rams lost some control over the public display of Nacua this way, but they put efforts in place within the building to keep it in check. Starting in his second season, Nacua received the star treatment of once-a-week podium interviews kept to a condensed time limit. And in these on-camera settings, he came off as a happy-go-lucky personality who defied the brute toughness he played with.
That fire still found a way to spill out at times. He was ejected from a game last season against the Seahawks when Stafford overthrew him for an interception, and a defensive back attempted to block him on the return. Nacua threw a punch at the left side of Coby Bryant’s helmet.
It was reminiscent of some of the moments his brothers have had. Kai once threw a punch as part of a sideline brawl while at BYU in the 2014 Miami Beach Bowl. And last season, Samson was suspended for a game in the United Football League for slapping a fan in the stands. Samson is now fighting a legal battle after being arrested two weeks ago for allegedly stealing Los Angeles Lakers rookie Adou Thiero’s car.
Because Puka has been so productive, the Rams have handled his slip-ups with conversations and lessons rather than public discipline. They choose words over action. And for his first two years, many of those conversations came from Kupp.
“He wears his heart on his sleeves,” Kupp said. “What you see, that’s Puka. He’s not hiding anything. You learn a lot about his story. He plays and lives with big emotions. He wears it on his sleeves so you know about it, and that’s part of how he makes his decisions and how he lives his life.
“There’s good and bad to that. Having an understanding of how to control it. You can’t punch people in the face. There’s learning lessons.”
At some point, the Rams knew Nacua would have to learn the lessons and apply them himself. They decided that time was last spring by releasing Kupp. But nobody could be certain how it would go.
It was an emotional and difficult decision, as Kupp had stated his desire to retire as a Ram and was a franchise icon after winning the NFL Triple Crown and making the clutch catches in a run to win Super Bowl LVI and being named the game’s MVP. But the Rams eyed an upgrade in Davante Adams, who could finish in the red zone and defeat man coverage in ways Kupp wasn’t as capable of after a string of injuries.
With Adams in his 12th season at age 33, now learning a new offense without much of an offseason with Stafford, the other implication was that Nacua was ready to be the clear No. 1 option.
It has played out that way on the field this season. Nacua has surpassed his explosive rookie campaign, now leading the league with 114 catches and 1,592 yards. Adams leads the league with 14 touchdown receptions.
In his first season with the Rams, Davante Adams has been the perfect complement to Puka Nacua. (Chris Coduto / Getty Images)
Whereas Kupp operated more as an older brother to a rookie Nacua, Davante Adams offered a resource from the outside who has lived his own rise to NFL superstardom and all the attention and challenges that spotlight can bring to a position like wide receiver.
Adams’ initial impressions were of Nacua’s light, fun, vibrant side on and off the field.
“If I found out that a person had an issue with Puka Nacua, that would tell me everything I need to know about him,” Adams said to former Rams tackle Andrew Whitworth on the “Fitz & Whit” podcast in November. “If you don’t like Puk, something’s wrong with you.”
Adams has been learning about Nacua, the person and player, in real time this season. The praise came before the week where Nacua invited livestreamers to a practice without McVay’s knowledge and created headlines with the antisemitic dance, criticism of officials and a postgame tweet doubling down on that officiating critique. (Nacua later released a statement denying any knowledge or participation in antisemitic tropes and has also apologized for the officiating criticism.)
Adams has not spoken publicly since those incidents, as he’s been dialed in on rehabbing an injured hamstring to be available for the playoffs.
The Rams have taken their own measures to protect Nacua this season, and not just with what he might say on camera. This season has created a few unscripted soundbites, from Nacua telling a fan at an NBA game that the “Ravens suck” to appearing on a stream with N3on and saying about Indianapolis Colts cornerback Sauce Gardner, “Where’s he at? Indianapolis? Ain’t nobody want to be in Indianapolis right now.”
With Adams new to the offense, the Rams leaned on Nacua as a high-target option who also did much of the motion blocking that Kupp used to perform as a hybrid receiver-tight end in McVay’s trademark 11-personnel offense. But by midseason, Nacua had battled injuries to his head and ankle and had to miss a game in London. By that point, he’d missed 17 games to injury between college and the NFL.
Without him against the Jacksonville Jaguars, McVay and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur unleashed a new three-tight-end approach. The results were so strong that they have leaned into running more of it than any team has since the NFL’s Next Gen Stats began tracking in 2016, and it’s served as a way to play just one of Adams or Nacua in those sets to limit their snaps and hits.
They know they need to find ways to protect him on the field because he often isn’t looking to protect himself.
“I also believe that concussions are all in your head,” Nacua said on the stream with Adin Ross before the Seahawks game.
“So concussions aren’t real? They’re all in your head?” Ross asked.
“Yeah,” Nacua said.
Nacua has an unpredictable personality. But, like with other stars across the league, the leash he’ll get from McVay seems like it’ll be longer than that of other players in part because of his high performance.
The Rams declined to institute any formal discipline with him after the livestream incidents, the postgame tweet or the attempt to livestream a postgame locker room that risked a league fine before a team employee intervened.
“It’s going to get fixed,” McVay said. “Trust me on that.”
They allowed the league to handle discipline for the officiating critiques, which resulted in a $25,000 fine. For a player on a fifth-round rookie contract that averages $1.02 million per season, it represented one of the first tangible setbacks Nacua has faced in the league. He is in line, however, for a potential major extension as soon as this spring.
“That one, it definitely hurt,” Nacua said about the fine. “It was a learning moment and an experience to learn from and to never let it happen again.”
The Rams are banking on growth from Nacua, who became a dad in October. His love of the game is rarely questioned. They just hope he is true to his word that he’ll voice his frustrations in private from now on.
“He’s a young kid. He is trying to figure it out. He’s got a lot of opportunities to have his voice be heard,” Stafford said on his “Let’s Go!” podcast last week. “We’ve gotta do as good a job as we possibly can at making sure that whatever comes out is a positive thing, right? He’s got this unbelievable platform to go be this great leader for not only our team, but for kids out there and people all over the United States that love this game and love him as a fan.”
When Nacua can go out and rack up 12 catches for 225 yards and two touchdowns, as he did against the Seahawks in Week 16, the Rams feel they have a reason to let the air breathe.
“Did you think his play showed that he was distracted?” McVay said after the game. “I didn’t think so either. He went off today.”
And for as long as he goes off in the games, the Rams will use private conversations in hopes of building growth.
He is their wild card, on and off the field, and their first Gen Z superstar.
They can design so much for him to take advantage of. And like when the ball is in his hands, what he does with it is anyone’s guess.
— The Athletic_’s Jourdan Rodrigue contributed to this story_
