Wide Receiver · Los Angeles Rams

Puka Nacua

No. 12 · 4th season

The best receiver in football might not have a new deal yet

One ranking doesn't change everything. But when the definitive grading service in pro football puts your name at the very top of its wide receiver list heading into a new season, it changes the conversation.

Puka Nacua came into the league without much runway. The Los Angeles Rams took him late in the draft, and he spent his first seasons proving the pick wrong before anyone had really finished doubting it. He became someone people talked about — a receiver who runs routes with enough precision that even scouts ran out of polite ways to be dismissive.

Now Pro Football Focus has him ranked as the best wide receiver in the NFL ahead of the 2026 season. No qualifier. Just first.

What makes this complicated is what comes next. The Rams are working through what a new contract looks like for Nacua, and receiver money has been climbing across the league. There's real talk that if a deal doesn't get done, the team could use the franchise tag on him as late as 2027 — a mechanism that buys the team time but leaves the player in a kind of holding pattern, compensated but not committed to.

Nacua just got named the best at his position. The number that comes after that is the question.

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