Rodgers Recruiting: Jets Targeting Raiders' Davante Adams?
New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers is apparently dreaming of getting the old band back together on the green side of the Meadowlands for a run at a Super Bowl championship in 2024.
Having already enlisted the services of former Green Bay Packers teammates Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb last season, the 40-year-old is now setting his sights on Las Vegas Raiders receiver Davante Adams.
Rodgers, per a Sunday report from NFL Network, has been attempting to recruit the Raiders star wideout, citing their prolific pairing in Green Bay from 2014-21.
Could New York Jets QB Aaron Rodgers and Las Vegas WR Davante Adams reunite in the Meadowlands?
Cred: FOX Sports Images
Much to the chagrin of Rodgers and Jets Nation, however, the report indicates that Las Vegas has no interest in trading Adams — believing that they can contend next season under newly-promoted head coach Antonio Pierce.
Still, the notion of a Rodgers-Adams reunion in East Rutherford is both intriguing and exciting. New York has been eying Adams since acquiring Rodgers and has reportedly inquired on his availability prior to the trade deadline in 2023.
Adams, 31, is a former second-round pick out of Fresno State by the Packers in the 2014 NFL Draft. With Rodgers as his quarterback, Adams caught 669 passes for 8,121 and 73 touchdowns. After refusing to play on the franchise tag in 2022, he was traded to the Raiders for a first and second-round draft pick in 2022.
Despite his acrimonious relationship with then-head coach Josh McDaniels, Adams still caught 100 passes for 1516 yards and 14 touchdowns in his first season with Las Vegas. In 2023, Adams appeared in 17 games for the Raiders and caught 103 passes for 1,144 yards receiving and eight touchdowns.
From a Jets perspective, the desire to enlist Adams’ services is understandable. The team's pass-catchers struggled due to poor quarterback play and ineffective talent management. In fact, Pro Football Focus ranked them 31 of 32 NFL teams. The exception to the rule, star receiver Garrett Wilson, caught 95 passes for 1,042 yards and three touchdowns. However, the Jets failed to receive notable contributions from the remaining components of their positional depth chart -- most notably Allen Lazard, who despite signing a four-year, $44 million deal with New York last offseason, logged only 23 catches for 311 yards and one touchdown.
Adams is set to hit the contractual books this season with a base salary of $16.8 million. Including 2024, he has three years remaining on his contract, with salary cap hits estimated at $44 million in both 2025 and 2026. Conversely, New York is projected to have approximately $4.9 million in available cap space at the start of the NFL year in March — meaning that the Jets brass would need to enact some creative money management to make a Rodgers-Adams tandem possible.
Conversely, Rodgers will turn his attention to the upcoming season — his second with the Jets. The 40-year-old was traded to New York, along with the Packers first and fifth-round selections in the 2023 NFL Draft, in exchange for the Jets' first, second and sixth-round selections in the 2023 draft and a conditional second-round selection in 2024.
However, he suffered a ruptured Achilles on just his fourth offensive snap of the season. Though he missed the nearly the entirety of his first year in New York, Rodgers is hopeful to be ready for the start of training camp in June.
