LOS ANGELES — Puka Nacua’s tenth catch on Sunday i’m ready the checklist for many catches in a rookie’s first two video games. His eleventh put him over 100 yards receiving for the second one sport in a row. However his twelfth confirmed simply who the fifth-rounder out of BYU is at the soccer farmland.

On fourth-and-2 and trailing the San Francisco 49ers by means of 10 with 10:18 excess, the Los Angeles Rams have been riding indisposed the farmland. Quarterback Matthew Stafford discovered Nacua in the midst of the farmland for a 9-yard final touch the place he used to be met by means of two defenders next his first step, however he trudged ahead for no less than 1 extra backyard. The power would lead to a farmland target and the Rams got here up trim of their comeback try, nevertheless it used to be simply one of the performs the place Nacua hasn’t relented a unmarried backyard.

Nacua has an NFL-high 111 yards next the catch this season, essentially the most by means of a Rams participant within the group’s first two video games since broad receiver Cooper Kupp had 146 in 2021, in keeping with ESPN Stats & Data. He and Kupp are the one Rams broad receivers with 100 of their group’s first two video games within the latter 15 seasons.

That fourth-down catch used to be one BYU broad receivers teacher Fesi Sitake noticed time and again throughout Nacua’s two seasons enjoying for the Cougars.

“He would catch anywhere from a five- to a 10-yard route and just turn right upfield and on contact would get hit, but then just finds a way to drag a defender or two, another two or three yards,” Sitake stated. “And you add those up on six, seven catches, those are 20 hidden yards that you get from just sheer grit and toughness and all that stuff.

“That’s the epitome of Puka.”

That Nacua has the opportunity to lead the league in targets is because the Rams have been without Kupp, their star receiver and Super Bowl LVI MVP. Kupp will miss at least two more games after he was placed on injured reserve before the start of the season because of a lingering hamstring issue.

Nacua leads the league with 35 targets — 10 more than Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson and 11 more than the Miami Dolphins’ Tyreek Hill, who rank second and third, respectively. Nacua’s 15 receptions in the Rams’ Week 2 loss are the most in a game by a rookie in NFL history. They’re tied for the second-most in a game in Rams history, trailing only Tom Fears’ 18 in 1950.

All this from an unheralded fifth-rounder who Rams coach Sean McVay called “an actual delightful awe” during training camp. Those who have known Nacua for longer than McVay, though, saw this success coming.

“I believed that he can be a superior professional, and I believed that everyone that handed on him would remorseful about it,” BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick said. “And seems like I’m proper.”

WHEN HE SEES Nacua make a contested catch, Roderick flashes back to a November evening in Boise, Idaho. Trailing by four at the end of the game, in front of a sold-out Boise State crowd, Roderick called three straight plays to get Nacua the ball.

“And next it used to be fourth-and-goal from the 5,” Roderick said. “Everybody within the stadium knew we have been throwing the ball to Puka. And we threw it to him anyway. We’re now not committing to attempt to trick ourselves right here. And all we did used to be simply throw him a abate and he made an improbable contested catch. It used to be cross interference, they didn’t name it, nevertheless it didn’t subject. He got here indisposed with it with each ft in bounds and we gained.”

Sitake remembers the conversation over the headset.

“All of us simply more or less unanimously indubitably,” Sitake said, “if we’re going to place the sport at the sequence, we’re giving it to our very best participant. We had alternative video games within the week the place we didn’t do this and we realized our lesson and we simply stated, ‘ what? If we’re committing to lose this sport, we’re committing to lose it committing to Puka.’ We travel up and it used to be a play games that actually handiest he may have made.”

Multiple scouts and personnel executives told ESPN before the draft that it was Nacua’s ability in contested ball situations that stood out on film.

Roderick called Nacua “the most productive I’ve ever revealed” at those contested catches, saying he has “a singular skill to be enjoying at a in point of fact imposing pace and to find the ball in gliding, and next modify his frame with courting to the place the defender is and are available indisposed with it.”

“We’d simply throw travel routes in video games to him, and he didn’t even should be viewable,” Roderick said. ” … He’ll simply run and lull the defender to vacation, and next, we name it past due fingers, the place he’ll put his fingers up on the latter 2nd the place the defender doesn’t have a prospect to react to it.”

That physicality from Nacua has been noticed at the NFL level. McVay said the rookie “performs with in point of fact competitive fingers.”

“You’ll be able to simply see during the catch level and next on touch,” McVay said. “He’s bulky at touch. He’s were given superior touch stability. I believe he made a quantity of fine performs with out the ball in his fingers in addition to with the ball in his fingers. He embodies that toughness.”

Roderick told the Rams scout he spoke to about Nacua that the receiver “practices so brittle, we needed to dial him again.”

“Like, whoa, loosen up, you’re going to harm your self,” Roderick said. “He doesn’t know any alternative pace than complete pace. I’m certain they’ve needed to educate him there that they don’t execute every alternative in apply within the NFL.”

HIS OLDER BROTHER Kai Nacua said that toughness developed at home, where Puka grew up the second-youngest of six kids.

“While you’re the more youthful brother, you more or less get beat up a quantity,” Kai said. “In order that got here with years of being on the base of the cluster.”

And you can see it translate to his game.

“He desires to turn how bodily he’s,” Kai said. “You recall to mind defensive gamers, they’re those that all the time wish to clash, however I believe Puka all the time sought after to determine, ‘I’m now not the one who’s committing to obtain a clash, I’m going in order a deplete as neatly.’ … He all the time made certain to turn that he used to be a bodily receiver.”

Nacua’s physical style of play has already taken its toll on his body. After the Rams’ first game of the season, he was on the injury report with an oblique injury. And while Nacua said he felt he was able to recover during the week and “simply let all of it fly” on Sunday, this isn’t his first experience having to deal with recovery.

Injury history played a larger part in him dropping to the fifth round of the draft in April.

Nacua broke his foot during his freshman season at Washington, where he played for two years before transferring to BYU. Nacua also dealt with nagging injuries there, including an ankle injury during the 2022 season.

Multiple scouts and personnel executives told ESPN before the draft that they had Nacua in the fifth to sixth round range and a few teams felt he was a priority free agent because of injuries.

Leading up to the draft, Sitake said Nacua was open about the idea he may not be a high pick, in part because he had seen his brothers Kai and Samson go through the process.

“I believed he treated it the suitable approach by means of pronouncing, ‘I in point of fact don’t know the place I’m committing to travel and relatively frankly, don’t help,'” Sitake said. “‘I imagine in myself and whoever takes me goes to be in point of fact satisfied that they did.’

“And so I was happy to see him go into the draft with that type of mindset because I’ve seen many others who haven’t done that, and it’s been a let down, it’s been a disappointment and affected them mentally. … I think a lot of his success right now is he’s playing very free, because I think he took a lot of unnecessary pressure off of himself starting from that draft process and what his expectations were.”

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IN THE FIRST two sequence abandoned Sunday, Roderick couldn’t imagine what number of techniques the Rams applied Nacua — and he took observe of it.

“They had him chip block a defensive end in pass protection, and then release on a route,” Roderick stated. “They had him crack block a defensive end on a pin and pull-run play. They threw him a screen, they threw him a hitch, they handed him a jet sweep, and I’m pretty sure there was another pass attempt to him that was a down-the-field pass attempt.

“What that advised me used to be they already believe this man to do a quantity of items, and he will have to be doing all of them nice-looking neatly in apply … since you don’t ask all your broad receivers so that you could do all of the ones issues. Particularly more youthful gamers, they in most cases specialised like, ‘Hi there, let’s quality him doing what he does very best,’ however Puka makes the whole lot glance simple, and he’s in point of fact, in point of fact mischievous. And so you’ll importance him in a quantity of various techniques.”

It was the same thing that made Nacua so good at BYU, where he caught 48 passes for 625 yards and five touchdowns in nine games in 2022.

“He may just run any course we needed. He may just put together any prevent we needed. He used to be our very best ball provider. He’s only a very flexible participant. However you’ve were given to be mischievous to do all that stuff. And he’s obviously earned their believe [because] you don’t see very many gamers do this many alternative issues within the first two sequence of the sport, even essentially the most veteran gamers,” Roderick said.

During OTAs, Kupp said Nacua has “a superior really feel for the sport” and “asks the suitable questions” in the meeting room and on the field.

“You are available, you’re operating unutilized ideas and such things as that,” Kupp said. “Issues that you just’ve achieved earlier than to get viewable would possibly now not have compatibility throughout the realm of the issues that we wish to do right here, however he’s simply transitioned so briefly over working out what the parameters are that he’s ready to paintings in.”

Former BYU quarterback Jaren Hall, a Minnesota Vikings fifth-round pick in April, said when he heard “how briefly he used to be finding out with Cooper Kupp and within the movie room with Matthew [Stafford] and Cooper [Kupp], taking note of them, I simply knew he’d discover a spot and he’d be relied on in point of fact briefly.”

When Rams offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur watches rookies, he can look at their eyes when they’re in the huddle, “and you’ll inform the blokes which might be swimming, the blokes that aren’t and he certainly has a calmness demeanor about himself.”

“His working out of the sport comes in point of fact herbal to him,” Stafford said.

Some of that came from learning from Kai, who played at BYU before appearing in 25 NFL games between 2017 and 2021. When Kai had time to talk to his family on Mondays and Tuesday during the season, he said he “used to be ready to only more or less give them no matter I used to be getting all through that pace,” teaching his younger brothers how to prepare for their dream of an NFL career.

“It certainly used to be a bonus for him to get that from an used brother,” Kai said, “any individual who used to be residing it date by means of date and simply listening to it continuously of like, ‘that is how you want to accomplish.'”

And now that he’s a pro, it’s the veterans in the Rams’ receivers room — Kupp, Van Jefferson, Demarcus Robinson and Tutu Atwell — that Nacua has been leaning on.

“They’ve helped boost up my finding out,” Nacua said. “It’s been so a laugh to get to invite questions. I am hoping they by no means get pissed off with me.”

Two weeks in regardless that, it’s brittle to believe someone getting pissed off with a record-breaking rookie.

ESPN NFL Society newshounds Kevin Seifert and Jeff Legwold contributed to this tale.