Getty Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams.
Davante Adams won’t say it but he has to be regretting his decision to force a trade to the Las Vegas Raiders this offseason. Not only is he losing more games than he’s used to, but his stats are also not up to his typical level. The reunion of Derek Carr and Adams was expected to light the NFL on fire but they don’t even look like a top-10 wide receiver-quarterback duo right now.
Adams hasn’t done a great job of hiding his frustrations this season. He shoved a cameraman after the Raiders’ loss to the Kansas City Chiefs and he hasn’t minced words in interviews. The five-time Pro Bowler gets as much attention from defenses as any player in the league. He’s consistently double-teamed and that was the case when he was with the Green Bay Packers. That never stopped him from putting up big numbers there but it’s slowed him down in Las Vegas. Without directly calling out the Raiders and Carr, he made some eye-opening comments about his role in the offense this week.
“At the end of the day, if we’re just going to concede and say, ‘oh, they double-teamed Tae, so it’s forcing the ball to him if we threw it to him,’ then I’ve got no business being in this building, because that’s what teams are going to do,” Adams told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “So, if you think that the only way I’m going to get the ball is when I’m singled up, then I’m going to have four catches on the year.”
Raiders Paid Adams to Make Plays
The Raiders gave up a first and second-round pick to trade for Adams in the offseason. They then handed him a $140 million contract. He’s one of the two highest-paid players on the team. He should be much more involved with how much the Raiders gave up to give him. He knows that and does think he should be getting more chances to make plays.
“I’d like to force it,” Adams said. “It is what it is. Nothing has been forced this year at all. I’ve had multiple games with like two catches, so I don’t think that we should be talking about me getting the ball forced to me. Like, that’s ridiculous. I think that when you have certain players, you do what you can do to get them opportunities, and that’s why I’m here. That’s why they paid me to come here and make plays.”
He was excellent in the first half against the Jacksonville Jaguars last week with nine catches for 146 yards. For some reason, the team stopped getting him the ball in the second half as he only had one catch for zero yards. The Raiders need to do a better job of keeping him involved for four quarters.
GOTTA LOVE THAT BULLDOG CONNECTION! 🐶🔥
@tae15adams | CBS
Carr Says His Partnership With Adams Is Getting Better
Adams’ comments certainly sound like shots at Carr even if he doesn’t want it to be taken that way. He’s the one who is throwing the ball and while head coach Josh McDaniels deserves blame, Carr could do a better job of getting the ball to Adams. He had a chance to talk about how his partnership with Adams is coming along.
“I mean, we’ve had some fun conversations, because he’s now seeing some things when he hasn’t had many coaching changes, he hasn’t had many systems to learn,” Carr said Wednesday. “And now he’s seeing what happens when you have to do that, and when you have to do it many times. So he’s seeing that, but we still feel like we’ve been productive. We’ve been doing some nice things, but we feel like we were getting better.