5 interesting stats from Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua’s record-breaking rookie season

Wide receiver Puka Nacua was selected in the fifth round of the 2023 draft by BYU. He flashed significant potential in college but struggled to stay on the field due to injuries and eventually slipped. However, Rams general manager Les Snead ignored that and found another late-round gem.

Nacua immediately burst onto the scene as a rookie, racking up 10 receptions and 119 yards in his NFL debut, and has steadily improved since then. He finished the season with 105 receptions and 1,486 yards, fourth in the league, while also starting all 17 games. With his eyes set on the 2024 season, Nacua looks to continue his stellar campaign.

Here are five interesting stats from Nacua’s record-breaking debut season:

The record for receiving yards by a rookie stood for 63 years before Nacua broke it last season. In Week 18, Nacua caught a six-yard pass to pass Bill Groman, who set the record in 1960. In the same game, he also broke the single-season rookie receptions record set by Jaylen Waddle in 2021.

“It’ll be written Puka Nacua (in the record books), but I wish it could say everybody,” Nacua said after the game. “All 11 guys, because it really takes all 11.”

An intermediate target is one that travels between 10 and 19 yards in the air, while a short target travels between zero and nine yards. Nacui’s 509 receiving yards on intermediate routes ranks fourth in the league, and in that context, he earned a PFF receiving grade of 95.5. On short routes, he amassed 609 yards and earned a receiving grade of 94.1.

Nacui’s ability to create space in the short field and make opponents miss him places him among the league’s best wingers.

Only one player created more yards after the catch than Nacua last season: Deebo Samuel (235.6). Samuel is considered the YAC king, so he’s in elite company. Nacua is right behind Samuel and ahead of guys like AJ Brown, George Pickens and DJ Moore, which is a testament to how tough he is to beat.

Next Gen Stats uses a machine-learning model to calculate expected metrics from historical data, which it obtains via tracking chips in players’ shoulder pads. In the case of YAC, they consider four variables: location and speed, proximity to the defender, field position, and play situation (downfield and distance).

It took Nacua just two weeks to etch himself into NFL history. After a 100-yard performance in his debut, Nacua caught an NFL rookie-record 15 passes on 20 targets for 147 yards in Week 2 against the 49ers. It was a losing effort against a division rival, but Nacua gave fans something to celebrate with his appearance. He even got two carries for four yards, bringing his total to 17 touches and 151 yards.

Before that, the rookie record for receptions in a game was 14, set by Najee Harris in 2021. Among wide receivers, the most was Deion Branch in 2002 with 13 against the Chargers.

Of Nacua’s 24 play-action targets, he caught 20 of them. Those catches gave him 366 play-action yards, sixth in the NFL. No other top 20 play-action pass producer caught a higher percentage of balls than Nacua.

Nacui’s 24.6% of his yards came from play-action passes, despite only 15.7% of his targets coming from that context. That’s an incredible efficiency. Nacui’s vision and awareness help him exploit the space created by fake play-action passes, as he showed last season.