Can Puka Nacua balance celebrity with stardom?

Two years ago I tweeted that Puka Nacua was going to sign a contract extension worth over $30 million per season and that he would prove to be a better receiver than Ja’Marr Chase, a declaration that even Rams fans said was going too far. Now entering his first offseason as an extension eligible player, Nacua’s contract valuation will push to exceed Chase’s record-breaking contract from 2025, a deal that pays him over $40 million per year.

Are fans still going to push back on my belief that Puka is going to be the highest-paid receiver in the league?

Now that Nacua has established that he’s as good as any receiver in the league and as the Rams are finalizing the terms of a contract that could pay him more than Chase, the next question specific to Nacua has to be about whether or not he’s ready for celebrity and fame.

Since becoming a true NFL star, Puka has certainly acted like a young person excited by the spotlight and at times that has drawn comparisons not to Chase, but to Antonio Brown.

Puka did appear to be speaking in gibberish in one clip at the Daytona 500:

Is there going to be a limit for “too much” or is it just a focused athlete enjoying his days off?

Aside from now becoming a part of the “who is he dating?” celebrity culture, a pretty normal side of modern day pro athlete stardom, Puka has also been cozying up to 49ers cheerleaders, fans, and players when basically any opportunity comes up for a photo shoot or a podcast.

If we have entered the age when NFL players won’t be able to keep their dating lives and drinking habits private, have we exited the one where rival players actually want to beat each other in football — or would at least pretend to by not accepting literally any invitation to make an appearance on a podcast for no comprehensible reason?

I mean, call me old fashioned but perhaps the thing that young NFL players do today that is far more confounding than doing too many commercials or sending a drunk tweet that they regret is podcasts.

PODCASTS?! WHY???

What exactly are players getting out of being on every other podcast every other day? I understand why musicians, actors, and comedians do podcast interviews, to promote something that they need to sell so that they can make a living. But active NFL players don’t have anything to promote to make money because they’re getting paid to play football. They will get paid the same whether they are more famous or less famous, as long as they continue to perform at a high level.

In fact, the only possible result of doing a bunch of podcasts is a loss of skill, not a gain. Explaining your process or what happened behind the scenes of a recent game while you’re still in the NFL could only do harm, not good. It’s probably not going to do anything but that’s just as much the same point:

Puka Nacua can’t get ANYTHING from doing a podcast. Yet he still seems to love the opportunity to say yes to any interview on the table.

The almost daily appearances by Puka doing something or other that goes viral online is leading Puka to being compared to Antonio Brown by some fans.

It’s one thing to pop up online once in a while and make a funny joke about wanting to date Sydney Sweeney, but seriously I don’t understand how one of the best football players in the world who still has so much more room to develop has time for all the interviews and public appearances and commercials and gaming that he does.

It’s truly another testament to this guy’s skill that he was arguably the best football player in the world in 2025.

But the unfortunate reality of the NFL is that this is not the NBA or the MLB—almost nobody is “the best” for very long when it’s football. The sport is too violent and too based on athletic skill to believe that Puka Nacua will have the same longevity of LeBron James or Michael Jordan. In actuality, while an NBA star can dominate for 10-15 years or a great pitcher can stand atop the game for over a decade, the NFL’s best receiver usually has 3-5 years tops.

Even the GOAT receiver Jerry Rice had 10 years when he was elite and then 10 years when he was just really good. And that’s JERRY RICE.

Compare that to Rams great Cooper Kupp and there’s a guy who was literally the best receiver in the league for one season. ONE. That’s it. And that’s COOPER KUPP.

While Puka is milking every ounce of “celebrity” from Internet fame, the priority still has to be on his football career and making sure that the only conversations that anyone is having about Nacua is whether or not he should have won Offensive Player of the Year over Jaxon Smith-Njigba or what he can do to help the Rams beat the Seahawks and the other 30 teams to win the next Super Bowl.

Those are the only conversations anyone should be having about Nacua for the next 12 months.

But it was just a couple of months ago that Nacua showed up on an Adin Ross twitch stream during a playoff run and then having to apologize for an “antisemitic dance”.