Puka Nacua Did Not Practice Friday and Is Questionable Against the Raiders: What It Means for the 2-4 Rams
Puka Nacua left Thursday’s practice early with a calf injury. He did not practice at all on Friday. Sean McVay listed him as questionable for Sunday at Las Vegas and called the injury minor.
For a 2-4 team that just lost its leading receiver for most of the rest of the season, the words “minor” and “questionable” are doing a lot of work.
What Is Actually Known
Nacua was not on Wednesday’s injury report at all. He was added Thursday as limited, the designation the Rams used because he did not finish the session, and he went for tests. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported Friday morning that the results came back better than feared.
“My understanding is after the test it was more minor than anything else,” Rapoport said on Good Morning Football. “I wouldn’t say precautionary, cause it’s not nothing, but at least not a significant injury.”
McVay confirmed the Friday absence and the questionable tag himself. Nacua has not spoken publicly about it, so anything attributed to him on this is somebody’s invention. Treat Sunday as a game-time decision, with inactives due 90 minutes before the 1:25 p.m. Pacific kickoff at Allegiant Stadium.
One note worth filing away: search results on this story surface a piece about Nacua hurting a knee. That is from September 2024, when he sprained his PCL in the opener at Detroit and missed five games. The injury this week is the calf, and every current source agrees on it.
Why This One Hurts More Than It Should
Davante Adams ruptured a hamstring on the final drive of last Sunday’s 18-16 loss to Arizona. McVay put him at six to 10 weeks on Monday, and the Rams placed him on injured reserve Tuesday. Adams led the team with 480 yards and four touchdowns on 30 catches in six games.
That makes Nacua the passing game. He has 37 catches for 417 yards and a touchdown in four games, having missed Weeks 2 and 3 with a hip and groin problem that was reported at one point as a pre-hernia issue. Last season he caught 129 balls for 1,715 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Behind him the roster thins out fast. Konata Mumpfield played 47 percent of the snaps in Week 6 and has 17 targets. Jordan Whittington has two catches for 12 yards all season and no targets in the last two games. Tutu Atwell was inactive in Week 6. Alex Bachman has not been targeted once. McVay said the Rams have not discussed signing a receiver from outside the building.
The Raiders Are the Right Week to Find Out
Las Vegas is 3-3 and sliding. Klint Kubiak’s first season as a head coach opened 3-0 and has produced three straight losses, two of them by three points. The defense has given up 30 or more in all three, including 33 to Buffalo last week.
If there is a week to learn whether Mumpfield can handle real volume, this is it. Matthew Stafford has kept the Rams among the league’s more productive offenses by yardage, and Los Angeles opened as a 3.5-point favorite.
Stafford was asked Thursday about replacing Adams. “You’re not going to one-for-one sub in a guy that’s going to be wearing a gold jacket one day, in Davante,” he said. “It’s a team effort.”
The Read
Nacua plays. The reporting is too consistent on the calf being mild, and the Rams are two games under .500 with a trip to a leaky defense in front of them. Sitting a receiver with a minor calf strain would be the responsible long-term decision, and a 2-4 team does not get to make long-term decisions in Week 7.
There is one more thing working against the cautious option. Nacua grew up in Las Vegas. He is not going to want to watch this one in a baseball cap.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
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