Puka Nacua entered the 2025 season as one of the most productive receivers in the NFL over the past two years, but the Rams have only increased his role, and therefore his stats, in the first two games of the season. Has Puka Nacua gained even more of your respect than he already had?
Nacua leads the NFL with 18 catches through two weeks, but even more spectacularly he also has a success rate of 80%! That’s not just the highest in the NFL, it’s almost 10% higher than Amon-Ra St. Brown’s rate of 70.6% and few players do it better than him.
Matt Harmon highlighted that Nacua is almost on a tier of his own through two weeks: 40% targets per route and over 4 yards per target. Only Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Zay Flowers are anywhere near Puka:
Nacua’s 221 receiving yards ranks fourth in the NFL and he has caught an insane 18 of 20 targets from Matthew Stafford so far. He’s averaging 11.1 yards per target and 9 catches per game.
Insane.
This is all aside from Puka’s 45-yard touchdown run:
Few players in history have been as productive as Nacua through his first 30 games:
To be honest though, I’ve gotten a lot of pushback in the past when I’ve said that Nacua is a top-3 receiver in the NFL. I’ve tried to put him on the same tier as Ja’Marr Chase but very few people want to believe that because Chase was a top-5 pick and Nacua was a fifth round pick. Chase is the prototypical number one “Hall of Fame caliber” receiver athlete and he’s been amazing with the Bengals in his career. There’s no doubt about that. If you built a WR in a lab, he would be Chase.
However, elite players are not built in labs. They’re unique, they come in different shapes, sizes, and abilities. The best players in history are often going against the grain, including the undersized Aaron Donald and the undraftable Kurt Warner. You can’t say that Nacua doesn’t belong in the conversation just because he was a fifth round pick and doesn’t have the same athletic gifts as Chase.
He has different gifts and Nacua has been as good as any receiver in the NFL since 2023. Others are starting to take notice:
So as strange as it is to think that Nacua is the player who you’ve gained the most respect for this year by being so good in two games, I do think that there were still a lot of non-believers out there. Were you one of them and has anything changed in the first two games of the season?
If Nacua is not the Rams player who impressed you the most in the first two games, or gained the most respect, who is? Who has been better than you thought he’d be?
Let us know in the comments your vote for the Rams player who is better than you thought he’d be.
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