Puka Nacua was at Los Angeles Rams teammate Kobie Turner’s wedding in March, when he got a call from head coach Sean McVay.
McVay was calling to tell Nacua he had been recruiting Davante Adams and that there was a good chance the Rams would be able to add him to the receivers room. On the night before the deal was done, he wanted to know what Nacua thought.
From off to the side, during the father-daughter dance, Nacua told McVay quietly, “I think that would be sweet.”
Six months later, McVay and the Rams’ offense got a glimpse of what Adams and Nacua can do together on the field: The pair accounted for 242 total yards and 22 of quarterback Matthew Stafford’s 32 targets in a Week 2 victory over the Tennessee Titans.
After the game, Adams was asked about those early conversations with McVay during the recruiting process about how he could fit into the offense and the highlight videos the head coach had sent over. It was those clips in which McVay showed Adams how some of the routes he ran during his time with the Green Bay Packers, the New York Jets and his final season with Las Vegas Raiders fit into the Rams’ playbook.
“So [he was] just letting me know that ‘things that you’ve been doing marry up great with what we do here, and can’t wait to see you come over and do it in a Rams uniform,'” Adams said. “He said that probably 100 times in six minutes, so that was good.”
And through two games, Adams said, that has shown up on the field.
“It has, yeah,” Adams said. “You saw we had a couple of miscues down in the tight red [on Sunday] where he was trying to get me in there. … We didn’t come up with the one before that, but he just kept pushing it and trying to get some good calls out there and I feel like as we went along throughout the game, he stayed aggressive and that’s the way you’ve got to do when you’ve got the type of team that we have.”
The Rams will get a better look at what type of team they do have and what the offense looks like with their top receiver pair when they play the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, Fox), a rematch of their January divisional round playoff game.
NACUA GREW UP a Packers fan, he said, so when he showed up for the Rams’ organized team activities in April and saw Adams, “It didn’t feel real.”
“We were just out at practice the other day,” Nacua said before Week 1, “and I’m sitting next to him under the tent while it’s a hundred and something outside but just thinking like, dude, I think you could scroll back somewhere in my Twitter profile and there’d be tweets saying, ‘Go Pack Go. I can’t wait to watch the Packers and especially to watch No. 17 [Adams].'”
But Nacua, entering his third NFL season, quickly realized how much he could learn from the receiver he looked up to, on everything from his body control and “his awareness of the rotation of defenders and how to attack leverage on any route.”
“He does it great and he explains it so well in the meeting room,” Nacua said. “So it makes it fun to watch tape and to be like, OK, how can I add some of these things to my toolbox?”
Rams receivers coach Eric Yarber called the meeting room “an open forum,” where the group can “talk openly about things” and be “free and vulnerable enough to ask questions and stuff like that.”
“Davante will run a certain route and … Puka will say, ‘Oh, what was your thought on that? What were you thinking?'” Yarber said. “And to hear him articulate everything that’s going on, it says a lot about how he studies the game and how much experience he has and how much knowledge that you can only get from playing that long.”
Nacua also said he liked to observe Adams during wide receiver drills during the offseason program, something he realized was difficult when he was leading the drills and taking the first rep.
“When I was in the front, I’m trying to sprint as fast as I can so I can turn around and watch him,” Nacua said. “So, I was like, ‘Hey, I think it’ll make my job a little bit easier if you just go first.'”
Adams said he laughed at first, “because he was saying it almost like he’d been wanting to say it for a long time, but he didn’t really know how to say that.”
“He was obviously trying to honor me, trying to honor him in making sure he didn’t feel like I was trying to step on his toes or anything, trying to bump him into No. 2 in the line,” Adams said. “… I just try to get out there and we talk through a lot of stuff and then I try to demonstrate it. It helps a little bit for me to go first and him not have to run a slant, catch the ball, and then peek at me while I’m going to do it. It makes sense and I love to lead every drill, just having the most experience. There’s a lot to say about the different ways that I do things so it can help.”
And while Nacua has been effusive in his respect for Adams, the veteran receiver says he feels the same way.
“He has so many different tools,” Adams said of Nacua. “He’s got good feet. He’s got great hands and an ability to be tough and run with the ball after the catch. He’s really an extremely well-rounded receiver. Obviously, guys have their strengths, but he can do pretty much anything on the field. You can put him in a slot, you can work him down the field. He’ll separate or he can make a contested catch if a guy’s tight on him. Anytime you can call whatever you want on the call sheet as a coach, it makes your job a little easier.”
IN THE RAMS’ season opener against the Houston Texans, while Adams was shadowed by All-Pro cornerback Derek Stingley Jr., Nacua had 10 catches for 130 yards. Adams added four catches for 51 yards and drew two pass interference penalties, “affect[ing] the game in a really positive way,” McVay said.
“They compliment each other really well,” Stafford said. “The cool thing is [they] cheer for each other. I mean nobody’s more excited when Tae scores a touchdown than Puka and vice versa. And so it’s just awesome to have two talented guys that … compliment each other so well out there.”
When asked whether he saw more double teams in Week 2 because of Nacua’s big game in Week 1, Adams said, “No, not so much.”
In Week 2, Adams lined up against Titans cornerback L’Jarius Sneed on 23 of his 31 routes (74.2%), catching four of his nine targets against him for 67 yards and his touchdown, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
“Sneed still traveled with me,” Adams said. “It was pretty spread open. It wasn’t like I was getting doubled all game. … We had a couple opportunities that we could have even capitalized on a few more and that’s the way we’ve got to look at it just so we can keep building and keep getting better as an offense.”
And while Nacua and Adams have combined for 28 catches, 423 total yards and two touchdowns (Nacua had a 45-yard rushing touchdown in Week 2), Stafford and Adams both called the first two games “a good start.”
“We obviously don’t want to get satisfied,” Adams said. “I think there’s some plays out there still to be made and you can always grow and be better. This is a good start, Week 2, to be somewhat rolling like this, playing good team football, togetherness, celebrating each other’s success, it’s just the way you dial it up for sure.”
A photo of the celebration after Adams’ touchdown Sunday caught Nacua’s eye after the game.
“I just saw on Instagram where we have a touchdown photo of us both flexing after his first touchdown [with] the Rams. And if you would’ve said that [was going to happen] when I was in high school, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, you’re crazy,'” Nacua said.
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