Puka Nacua’s psoas soreness clouds Rams practice availability after joint work with Cowboys

The Los Angeles Rams entered their joint work with the Dallas Cowboys aiming to build rhythm against live looks, but the session came with a quick health update involving their most important passing target group. Wide receiver Puka Nacua was not available for Thursday practice after leaving the joint practice with Dallas two days earlier with an injury, according to reporting cited by Yahoo Sports.

Rams coach Sean McVay identified the nature of the problem as psoas soreness. The psoas is a deep core muscle and a primary hip flexor, meaning it plays a key role in lifting the thigh for acceleration, sustaining forward lean, and controlling hip positioning through route breaks. When that area is irritated, even limited tightness can translate into shortened steps or altered hip mechanics for a receiver running timing-dependent routes.

Nacua’s absence from practice does not, by itself, establish a longer-term timeline. In training camp and the preseason, teams frequently manage soreness by adjusting reps, limiting certain drills, and monitoring day-to-day movement. Still, the immediate takeaway from McVay’s comments is that this is not being treated as a routine day-to-day inconvenience, since the team removed Nacua from practice rather than simply scaling his workload.

The timing matters for a Rams offense that relies on Nacua’s ability to get open and to win both intermediate and contested targets. Even when a player is medically cleared to participate later, hip-flexor tightness can affect how a receiver plants, pivots, and accelerates out of breaks. For a player who is heavily involved in the passing game, a reduction in full-speed work can also affect chemistry with the quarterback and precision on route spacing.

From a team-building standpoint, the Rams are also balancing development and availability for multiple receiver roles. With Nacua sidelined for a session, opportunity shifts are likely to land more heavily on other established targets and camp challengers during practice reps, particularly in the periods where the offense works scripted timing and route-run sequences.

For Dallas, the joint work provided a measure of how their defense matches up with a Rams offense that regularly asks receivers to win at multiple levels of the field. A receiver of Nacua’s caliber typically forces defenses to account for timing and leverage decisions, so even a brief absence can change the look a defense is able to simulate over the next practice cycle.

What to watch next is whether the Rams can bring Nacua back in a limited capacity before any major decision point, or whether his status continues to be constrained as the soreness is assessed. If the team treats it as a short-term flare-up, availability could return quickly. If tightness persists, the Rams may opt to reduce the chance of a setback by keeping him out of full-speed running and focusing on controlled movement while the hip-flexor recovers.