The most important offseason of Puka Nacua’s career is happening right now in a holistic care facility.
The man who emerges will set the stage for so much: for himself, his family and for the Los Angeles Rams’ present and future.
To figure out how we got here, how one of the NFL’s top stars can be seeking holistic care during an offseason that was supposed to set him up financially for life, you could start with a timeline: It involves livestreamers, a league fine and a lawsuit with allegations of biting women while intoxicated on New Year’s Eve.
A steady stream of Nacua headlines that weren’t about his All-Pro play or setting Rams franchise records can lay out the kind of spiral that leads to a moment of intervention. Nacua is in a holistic care facility because he needs to be. But also because he chose to be.
So much of Nacua’s story thus far is about a kid who fell in love with football and never quite grew up. That joy and recklessness are there when he catches a pass between zone coverages, slams through a sandwich of defenders and barrels into the end zone. It’s there when he sprints off the field screaming, “I lift weights!” It’s there when he parties with celebrities and drives around the Daytona 500 track and fires off a tweet after a game, too.
“He plays and lives with big emotions,” Cooper Kupp, the former Rams receiver who still trains with Nacua, said in December. “He wears it on his sleeves so you know about it, and that’s part of how he makes his decisions and how he lives his life. There’s good and bad to that.”
But this isn’t a kid anymore, and that’s the message the Rams hope he’ll learn, along with many others, during his stay in the care facility. This is a 24-year-old man, a father and someone who could soon be the face of this billion-dollar franchise. Whether the Rams want him to be or not, that will be their reality if they extend him on a top-of-market contract.
“At the end of the day, he’s a young man becoming,” Rams general manager Les Snead said at the league meeting this week. “This is a part of the developmental process. The impact is continuing to evolve, not only as a person but also as a football player. You need to be on your P’s and Q’s in both categories to earn that type of contract.”
Ask anyone who has gotten close to Nacua in the Rams’ facility, and they will rave about his soul. It’s why it hurts so much to see what he does in his most careless moments.
It’s easy to see Nacua’s trip to the facility as a response to a lawsuit, a league fine, a shifting public image and a team that’s still deciding whether to pay him in the neighborhood of Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who just inked a four-year, $168.6 million deal.
But it’s really about prevention. Nacua hasn’t faced any serious consequences, such as criminal charges. And the Rams haven’t taken him off the field because they can’t afford to.
The week he attempted to sneak livestreamers into the facility, called out NFL officials and worked on a touchdown dance with antisemitic undertones that he claimed he wasn’t aware of, he caught 12 passes for 225 yards and two touchdowns. He has been able to prove, so far, that none of his off-the-field moments have taken away from the superb play between the lines.
How Nacua emerges from these weeks in the care facility, which lessons he embraces and how he folds those into the charismatic and spontaneous person he is will be the biggest development of this Rams offseason.
For the long term, it’s more important than Matthew Stafford coming back for an 18th season, or whether Davante Adams can repeat as the league leader in touchdown catches, or whether the Rams can hoist another Lombardi Trophy at SoFi Stadium.
Those are all 2026 storylines. Where Nacua goes from here can be so much bigger than that. And the Rams are moving through this offseason as if that’s on their mind.
Their big swing was a blockbuster trade for All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie, which was about fixing the defense’s Achilles’ heel after a gutting loss to Sam Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game. But by making McDuffie the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history at $31 million per season, they also sent a signal about what it takes to earn a major extension from this team in a spring when so many current players are entering contract years.
In McDuffie, the Rams brought an energetic leader back to his hometown of Los Angeles. And when McDuffie says his goal is to become a face of the franchise, the contract the Rams handed out says they want that, too.
“It feels like he’s one of us,” Rams coach Sean McVay said of McDuffie.
The first teammate to call McDuffie upon news of the trade was Nacua. They played together at the University of Washington, before Nacua became a star who had to live with expectations. That was before McDuffie became a star and two-time Super Bowl champion. And now, McDuffie will speak from the exact place Nacua is trying to go.
Their coach during those Washington days was Jimmy Lake, who was just promoted to the Rams’ defensive backs coach. That promotion required McVay to split from a coach he’s trusted for years in Aubrey Pleasant, whose role as assistant head coach was to connect with players about life, stresses and pressures off the field.
Now, Lake will fill some of that void. So, too, will new assistant head coach Kliff Kingsbury, who has built a career on connecting with young players chasing something bigger, from Kyler Murray to Jayden Daniels.
It can also explain some of the attempts to trade for A.J. Brown.
By considering a trade with the Philadelphia Eagles that would have included swapping Adams for Brown, the Rams showed once again they are aggressive about upgrades. But the idea of moving off a 33-year-old receiver for a 28-year-old was about much more than 2026. Brown is under contract for four more years. The way his deal was structured, the Rams could have acquired him and still paid Nacua at a market premium.
But the hidden benefit is that they wouldn’t have had to. Brown could have been their No. 1 receiver in the coming years if he needed to be. It’s what made him different than Adams in a way that deserved a serious look.
But because the Rams decided to stick with Adams and his red zone cheat code, they’re now placing the keys to the future in the walls of Nacua’s holistic care facility. With Stafford at age 38 and Adams turning 34 this season, the one piece of this passing game who can engineer the years after this all-in Super Bowl push is Nacua.
The Rams often weaponize everything they are to become the place stars seek out, from life in Los Angeles to a culture run by McVay to stars to throw to or catch passes from. That is largely how they landed McDuffie. But they don’t have nearly as much of that leverage with Nacua right now. He is so prolific in such a premium role that if the Rams don’t pay him a major deal, another team will.
Beyond what his All-Pro play can bring in 2026, the Rams need Nacua to build up a young quarterback after Stafford or to attract the next established passer in a trade. The Rams had the No. 1 scoring offense last season, but that foundation could topple like a house of cards if Nacua, Stafford and Adams are all off this roster by 2028.
And so the Rams need this trip through holistic care to be more than something temporary or image-based. Checking into the facility was one step. Completing the program is another. But the step that ultimately matters is what Nacua learns and carries forward.
This can’t just be about a timeout during the offseason that earns him an extension. It has to drive Nacua’s words, actions and choices in social circles, to last when he’s away from the facility, when the temptations arrive and when he’ll have the money and security to feel far more invincible than he has before.
The Rams paid McDuffie this offseason because they trust him. They are waiting to pay Nacua because they want him to earn their trust. But they need Nacua more than anyone else they can sign right now, and that was the reality they accepted by not trading for Brown.
“I trust this kid’s heart. I’ll continue to put my arm around him and help this kid grow,” McVay said of Nacua. “… Let’s have an understanding of what the expectations are and who you can become and who you want to become.”
They aren’t saying it just to be supportive. They’re saying it because they all need it so badly to become true.