Puka Nacua burst onto the scene and has established himself as one of the top wide receivers in football across his three seasons in the league. The BYU product finished last season with a league-leading 129 receptions and 107.2 receiving yards per game. Nacua tallied 1,715 receiving yards and 10 receiving touchdowns on the season. From a fantasy football perspective, Nacua finished third among all players with 394 total fantasy points on the season based on DraftKings scoring, or 24.6 fantasy points per game. He led all wide receivers in each category.
But the Los Angeles Rams star also carries more risk than is ideal for a talent of his caliber. It has been a turbulent offseason for Nacua, with negative headlines he has been forced to address and notable injury issues as the season rapidly approaches.
As you finalize your draft boards and weigh the best decisions to make for your respective fantasy football squads, does the baggage surrounding Nacua make selecting him in the top five of the draft too much of a risk?
Is Puka Nacua worth a top-five fantasy pick?
The most pressing issue about Nacua’s outlook is his current injury problems. The Rams’ star left practice on August 11 with an issue that was described as minor at the time. He is officially dealing with a psoas issue, which is a deep core muscle that connects the lower spine to the pelvis and upper thigh bone. Nacua still has not returned to practice since then, although he has been spotted on the sideline doing some individual work. Los Angeles has maintained its stance that it is being overly careful with the star wide receiver.
However, eyebrows were raised even more when the Rams traded to reacquire WR Tutu Atwell from the Miami Dolphins on Thursday. Atwell spent all five previous seasons in the league with the Rams, but he originally signed a free-agent deal to leave for Miami. This could be Los Angeles regretting letting him go and adding some wide receiver depth to their roster. Or it could hint that the team is more concerned about Nacua’s outlook than it’s letting on publicly. It is also worth acknowledging that extension talks with the franchise were put on hold this offseason before this injury issue even popped up.
Still, Rams head coach Sean McVay insisted that the Atwell trade had nothing to do with Nacua’s situation.
“It gives us an opportunity to be able to have that speed element, and he can do some different things,” McVay said after the team’s preseason finale against the Chargers. “It had nothing to do with anything other than just adding depth to the receiver room.”
When he is healthy and at his best, there is zero doubt that Nacua is one of the most productive wide receivers in the NFL. He was second in the league in fantasy points per game last season, trailing only Christian McCaffrey, and averaged 1.8 more fantasy points per game on DraftKings scoring than the next leading wide receiver, Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Los Angeles is committed to its high-powered offense, and expectations are sky-high for the franchise entering this season. Nacua is sure to play a major role in this offense as much as he can, and there will be weeks where he can swing a fantasy football game outlook by himself.
But with an average draft position of roughly 4.7, Nacua will be the definition of a high-risk, high-reward player. The opportunity cost of passing up the surrounding talent is massive, considering how high a selection he is worth. The saying goes that you cannot win a fantasy football season with your first-round pick, but you can lose it.
Injuries are unpredictable and impossible to map out over the course of an NFL season. Football can be a sport of attrition, and sometimes even the Super Bowl winner is largely the healthiest team standing. But Nacua has quite a few red flags to his name that cannot just be ignored at this high of a selection.
There is absolutely a world where Nacua overcomes the early injury issues and picks up where he left off as one of the most productive wide receivers in the NFL and fantasy football. But since selecting him likely costs you the chance to draft players like Smith-Njigba, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jonathan Taylor, CeeDee Lamb, McCaffrey, Justin Jefferson, Bijan Robinson, or Jahmyr Gibbs, this is a difficult pill to swallow.
The appeal is obvious, but let one of your other league mates take the risk and ensure you minimize risk as much as possible with such a high selection.
