Before he embarrassed evaluators and made NFL history and honored his late father on international stages, Puka Nacua played to unwind. He always used the newest iteration, and he often picked the same team—the Rams. He threw virtual passes with Matthew Stafford’s golden right arm, deployed Cooper Kupp all over and studied uniform combinations and the history they highlighted.
Which is funny, because Nacua hasn’t played in . He no longer needs the console-controller-screen combo to partake in Rams offensive football. He’s a rookie receiver in Los Angeles, catching Stafford targets, and he filled in for Kupp, who missed the season’s first month with an injured hamstring. Nacua’s younger brother asked him for the code to the new version the other day. He answered politely, because that’s him, the newest star in Hollywood, who never saw himself that way and never will.
Even now.
But … life is different, too. His brother should understand that Puka, of all Nacuas, has been busy lately, in the best way. The NFL draft, joining the Rams, securing a role, expanding that role and exploding into the mainstream sports consciousness—everything is changing. In the case of pick No. 177 last April, Puka hasn’t exceeded expectations so much as he has bludgeoned them with a sledgehammer before driving over them with a monster truck. He’s first-name-only famous, already.
Without him, no one would be describing the Rams as a fringe playoff team. Without his story, smile or bearing, there’d be no outsized attention paid to a franchise that’s still rebuilding after its Super Bowl triumph in February 2022.
It’s all happening, a lot of things, the kinds of things that don’t happen often, if ever, in the NFL. Sure, fifth- and later-round picks sometimes become starters, even stars. But Puka entered pro football’s evaluation incubator as a prospect known for a variety of skills rather than any one specialty. Many dinged him for his timed speed in events such as the 40-yard dash. In college, he played for two programs from 2019 to ’22, Washington and BYU; neither reached a major bowl game. The statistics he accumulated—107 catches, 1,749 yards, 19 total touchdowns—certainly didn’t project what happened in September, against better defenders, on grander platforms.
What Puka is doing simply doesn’t happen in the NFL, save for the rare, generational exceptions. And yet, while the past seven weeks have been surreal, exceptional and life-altering, the Hollywood star named Puka can say two counterintuitive things simultaneously. Yes, it’s strange, this series of pinch-me moments, becoming a one-name superstar in a city with no shortage of them, , playing in front of LeBron and other celebrities, learning from Kupp, connecting with Stafford. But while most should see his star turn as improbable bordering on fiction, sees the surreal stuff but not the improbable framework that’s often attached. Say what you will about his dreams, but this is what he wanted, what he dreamt of on the worst nights, the ones spent lamenting those he lost.
“I wouldn’t say ,” he said, over the phone, after a Rams practice in early October. “Everything has been pretty good so far. Nothing too crazy.”
He’s asked for an example, an indicative interaction that seems wild but not too wild. He chooses a recent trip to Whole Foods, where one gentleman followed him, eyeing him, as if he had ever heard of Puka two months ago. “I’m getting some weird looks nowadays,” he says, breaking into laughter.
He lays out pros and cons, then stops. “Cons” isn’t the right phrasing. The extra attention, interactions with strangers and celebrity accumulated in a city that loves nothing more than its famous citizens. Even doing more interviews over the first month of the NFL season than in all his college years combined. They’re “good problems.”
Besides, only a year ago, wasn’t he one of those strangers? The guy—in this case, who happened to play football—who admired athletes, wanted to meet them; and would have reacted, perhaps embarrassingly, if serendipity had struck? Of course he was. As one of this season’s most prominent players, his shift in stature brought on questions.
Like: How to maintain this hot-air-balloon rise?
Or: How to build on impossible?
