- One of the most prolific starts in league history: Nacua’s 98.3 PFF receiving grade is the highest grade PFF has ever awarded to a wide receiver who has started each of the first four games of a season.
- No type of defense is safe: Nacua leads the league in yards and receptions against both zone and man coverages.
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Through just four weeks of the 2025 NFL season, Puka Nacua has already built more than 100 yards of breathing room atop the receiving yardage leaderboard. Nacua is already halfway to a 1,000-yard season, and is well on pace to become the first ever player to amass over 2,000 receiving yards in a single season.
Of course, Nacua maintaining this blistering early-season pace would be an extreme feat. Even after tallying 500 yards this young in the season, Nacua would still need to average 113 yards per game from here onward to claim the single-season receiving yardage record from Calvin Johnson’s 1,964 yards in 2012. The last person to maintain that pace for an entire season? Nacua’s former teammate, Cooper Kupp, in 2021.
Wide receivers getting off to hot starts is quickly becoming a Rams signature. Nacua is one of just three Los Angeles players over the past five years to catch more than 35 passes in the opening month of a season. The other two are Kupp in 2022 and Nacua himself in 2023.
The only issue Nacua faced during that electric 2023 rookie campaign was drops, with 13 in total — including two in his debut. The same cannot be said this time around. Nacua has become the first player in the PFF era (since 2006) with 40-plus receptions in the first four weeks of a season without a single drop.
Thanks in large part to this absence of drops, along with his eight contested catches on nine opportunities, Nacua has earned himself an eye-popping 93.8 PFF receiving grade so far this season. That’s the highest grade PFF has ever awarded to a wide receiver who has started each of the first four games of a season.
Nacua has played simply incredibly. Despite only finding the end zone once over the month of September, the level of down-to-down quality Nacua has showcased is enough to rival any four-game stretch at the wide receiver position in NFL history.
While Wes Welker holds the seemingly unbreakable record of receiving yards over the first four weeks of a season (616 yards for the 2011 Patriots), it should be noted that Welker ran 154 routes over that timeframe, 34 more than Nacua.
This is where yards per route run comes into play. When used correctly, it is one of the very best metrics for assessing a receiver’s effectiveness relative to how much football they play. In PFF history, only two players have run more than 100 routes over the first month of the season and achieved over 4.0 yards per route run. Those players are 2007 Randy Moss and 2025 Nacua. Not bad company for the 24-year-old.
To nobody’s surprise, Nacua has been winning in more ways than one. He currently leads the NFL in slot receiving yards (214) despite spending less than half his time there. Nacua doesn’t even rank in the top 40 of slot snaps played this season. When lined up on the outside, it’s been a similar success story. His 91.7 PFF receiving grade from the boundary and 94.6 grade from the slot both rank first in the NFL.
While many of the receivers to post such gaudy early-season numbers in recent memory have leaned on a handful of perhaps unsustainable chunk plays, Nacua hasn’t really needed to. His longest reception of the year so far came in Week 4 for just 31 yards. There are no 75-yard bombs or busted coverages inflating the numbers here.
This is simply who Nacua is.
His 8.6-yard average depth of target this season is just barely above league average (8.2). That’s a far cry from Julio Jones’ 15.9 or Randy Moss’ 12.9 marks when they got off to historic starts.
Nacua’s average yards after catch (4.3 yards) is actually below the league average (5.1). Again, there hasn’t been a missed tackle on a slant that he has taken to the house, or a well-blocked screen pass springing Nacua into wide-open space. He’s winning in the purest, most ethical manner in which wide receivers are intended to win: Whenever the ball comes Nacua’s way, he catches it.
No route typifies this archetype more than the in/dig route — a route that has been in football since the advent of the passing game. So far this season, Nacua has been targeted on 11 in routes, catching all 11 passes for 123 yards, including seven first downs — leading the NFL in all of those numbers. It’s traditional football in its finest form from Matthew Stafford and Nacua.
It doesn’t matter how opponents try to defend Nacua — the Rams are finding ways to get him the ball no matter what. Nacua leads the NFL in receptions and yards vs. zone coverage and… You guessed it, he also paces the league in receptions and yards vs. man coverage.
Nacua has always been a monster versus man coverage. He sat fourth in yards versus man coverage in his rookie season, and fourth again from Week 8 onward last season after returning from injury.
In a world where everyone debates Justin Jefferson vs. Ja’Marr Chase when asked who is the best wide receiver in the NFL, Nacua has firmly thrown his hat into the ring.
He may not be the biggest, the fastest, or the most elusive, but Nacua is the purest wide receiver in the NFL. He may just be ready to take that title of “best” away from the pair of LSU alumni.
This news was originally published on this post .
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