The Los Angeles Rams placed two receivers on ESPN’s top-10 wide receiver rankings for 2026, released Tuesday: Puka Nacua at No. 4 and Davante Adams at No. 10. Only Dallas matched the feat in the annual survey of league executives, coaches and scouts conducted by Jeremy Fowler.
Nacua, an honorable mention a year ago, appeared on all but one ballot this time, with roughly 85 percent of his votes landing in the top five. The numbers behind the rise: a league-leading 129 catches in 2025 — the second-most in a single season in franchise history, behind Cooper Kupp’s 2021 — a 77.2 percent catch rate, 80 receptions that moved the chains and 668 yards after the catch, most among all receivers. “Strong hands, contact balance, ability to block in the run game, run after the catch, run through the catch, can go get it, can play any spot,” an NFL coordinator told Fowler. “Complete receiver. Him and Chase are the hardest to tackle.”
Adams’ case looked nothing like Nacua’s, which is what makes it interesting. At 33, he is the only receiver in his 30s on the list, and his 789 receiving yards in 2025 were his fewest since 2015. The voters looked past the raw total to what he did with Matthew Stafford: 14 touchdown catches and a league lead in receiving scores despite missing more than three games — Adams became just the third player since 1940 to pull that off, and the last one was Jerry Rice in strike-shortened 1987. “His instincts and route running are still there even as his athletic traits have declined,” an NFC executive said. “He just knows how to get open.”
That is the veteran-value proposition in a single ballot line. Receiver money chases yardage totals; Stafford’s MVP season ran through a 33-year-old whose separation now comes from craft rather than burst, and the people who build rosters ranked that skill top-10 anyway.
The pairing arrives with a clock attached. ESPN notes Nacua is a 2027 free agent expected to seek a new contract, and the same survey series ranked Stafford the No. 3 quarterback in football on Monday. For now, the reigning MVP returns both of his top targets, each certified by the league’s evaluators, with Rams veterans due in camp later this month.
