Rams receiver Puka Nacua\u2019s quick rise to NFL stardom has served as a beacon for other current and former NFL players and rising college and high school players.<\/p>\n
Carolina Panthers rookie receiver Tetairoa McMillan, who played at Anaheim Servite High, was a first-round draft pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a chance to watch his game, especially as another Polynesian athlete and as a wide receiver,\u201d said Nacua, who is of Samoan and Hawaiian descent. \u201cAs somebody who is in the skill position, to see him go in the first round and set the new standard for our culture. … Hopefully, after the game he\u2019s not too mad and we\u2019ll be able to exchange jerseys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nacua said that when he was younger, he looked up to players such as JuJu Smith.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere weren\u2019t a ton of Polynesian athletes playing the skill position,\u201d Nacua said. \u201cTo see his success and to have other Polynesian athletes say my name was mentioned and that they wanted to be able to run into people and score some touchdowns every once in a while, is a cool thought to think about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rams receiver Puka Nacua\u2019s quick rise to NFL stardom has served as a beacon for other current and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[43967,43966,9261,11459,48,52,51,5562,47,50,49,63,43828,3554,43965,8062,11706,30072,12295,315,1543],"class_list":["post-75810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-10th-victory-sunday","tag-america-stadium","tag-bank","tag-charlotte","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-week","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-n-c","tag-odd","tag-panthers","tag-prediction","tag-ram","tag-ram-coach-sean-mcvay","tag-tampa-bay","tag-time","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}