Davante Adams is feeling pretty good these days. He’s back in Cali with the Rams on a team with a big armed QB who has a Super Bowl ring. Well, he had that last year too with Aaron Rodgers, with whom he forced the Raiders to facilitate a reunion. But this time he hopes things will be different.
It’s certainly not been great for Adams the past couple years. After catching 100 passes for 1516 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2022, everything fell apart in 2023. The Raiders released his good friend Derek Carr, but the real problem was they still had Josh McDaniels at head coach. Or they did for half the season before he was fired and the job was handed over to linebackers coach Antonio Pierce.
Pierce was a fiery presence, but he is a defensive minded guy. Not only that, but he wasn’t great at the whole game management part. And despite Adams’s number of catches rising to 103 that season, his yards per catch (11.1) and touchdowns (8) were his worst since 2015; his second season in the league. It was not a great time for Adams.
“That was just a dark moment in all of our lives,” Adams told ESPN at Rams camp this week. “I think all of us were pretty miserable over there.”
The subject came up because Adams is teammates again with Jimmy Garoppolo who was the Raiders starting QB to begin that doomed 2023 season. And Adams was trying to make sure Jimmy G know his feelings about that season and his part in it was nothing personal. Adams even said he and Jimmy G “caught up and laughed about it.”
For those old enough to remember that ‘dark time’, the Raiders locker room was elated in celebration when they won the first game after McDaniels’s firing. There was a weight that had lifted from them. Like ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead’ kind of jubilance. Tho most of that energy seemed to be coming from the defensive side of the ball.
That energy didn’t carry over into 2024 when Pierce had the interim tag removed to become the head coach heading into the season. And soon the rumblings that Adams wanted out began. Rumors he wasn’t happy were out there, but didn’t really give a firm denial of their validity. And it only took three games into the season before Adams had seen enough and wanted to join Rodgers in New York.
Times are not only better now for Adams, but better for the Raiders. So, everyone is happy.
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