Before Puka Nacua became a household name with the Los Angeles Rams, he was a lesser-known wide receiver prospect out of BYU. And before he played for the Cougars, he spent two years at Washington with the Huskies.
During his time at Washington, Nacua was teammates with incoming rookie Rome Odunze, a projected top-10 pick. They crossed over in 2020, though Nacua was limited to only three games that year due to injury.
Their time in the same offense wasn’t very long, but Odunze knew Nacua was special just based on the way he beat corners consistently in practice. Odunze also said it was Nacua who was encouraging his fellow receivers to lay blocks on defensive ends in the running game.
“Oh yeah, we knew Puka was like that because he was going he was going against Trent McDuffie and Kyler Gordon – who, I mean, Trent McDuffie, in my opinion might be the best corner in the league,” Odunze told Ryan Clark on “The Pivot” podcast. “So he was going against them and he would win. He would win a lot so when we came in, it was hard for us to first come in and really get jiggy on Trent and Kyler. We developed and started to get better, but when we came in, he was doing people left and right, catching this, catching that. He’s a dog. He was the one that taught us to go smack a D-end or go block a linebacker. So we knew he was him.”
“We knew Puka was like that”
The wide out room at @UW_Football was stacked when @RomeOdunze arrived on campus. One of the players in that room was @pukaizded Rome says he was everything then, that we saw in his rookie season. He watched him go head to head with stars like… pic.twitter.com/PqlstkKvmH
— Ryan Clark (@Realrclark25) April 16, 2024
Odunze noted that Nacua dealt with injuries in college but when he was healthy, he was a playmaker who would consistently go up and take the ball out of the air – something he did regularly with the Rams last season.
The Rams have shown interest in Odunze leading up to the draft, meeting with him at the combine as a potential trade-up target in Round 1. Adding him to a receiving corps alongside Nacua and Cooper Kupp would give the Rams one of the best trios in the league.