Adams Continues Record-Setting Onslaught vs. 49ers
GREEN BAY, Wis. – At the season’s midpoint, Davante Adams has caught 53 passes for 675 yards and eight touchdowns. That’s a 16-game pace of 106 receptions for 1,350 yards and 16 touchdowns.
That’s one hell of a season.
Imagine his numbers had he not missed two-and-a-half games early in the season with an injured hamstring.
Adams is on a staggering run. During Thursday’s 34-17 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara, Calif., Adams caught 10 passes for 173 yards and one touchdown. It’s his third game this season with 10-plus catches, 150-plus yards and at least one touchdown.
According to Stathead.com, Adams and Calvin Johnson (Detroit Lions, 2012) are the only players in NFL history with three such games in one season. That’s it. Not Jerry Rice. Not Larry Fitzgerald. Not Randy Moss.
And Adams has only played five full games.
According to ESPN Stats & Info, Adams is the first player since Moss in 2007 to record at least 600 receiving yards and six receiving touchdowns in his first six games of the season.
It is preposterous production considering everyone in the stadium knows that No. 12 is going to throw the ball to No. 17.
“He’s such a great player,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said after a virtuoso day of his own. “He’s tough on matchups. He’s able to create so much space with his release pattern and he’s got enough speed to get on top, so you can’t necessarily play low and expect certain routes. We hit him with a lot of different things tonight. Hit him on the first possession with a go ball that he made a nice adjustment on. He’s so talented, he can do it all. Handles himself the right way. Just a joy to play with. A special guy.”
Adams’ destruction of the 49ers started on the opening drive with a twisting, tumbling 36-yard touchdown catch in the end zone vs. Emmanuel Moseley. That gave Adams a league-leading eighth touchdown catch of the season.
“It was just an old-fashioned go route against free access, so I just had to eat up that space a little bit,” Adams said. “I looked up, the ball literally couldn’t have been any better than it was. It was literally a perfect throw. It was almost so perfect where it threw me off. I was expecting the ball and I was looking up and I kind of lost it in the lights for a second. And then it just dove off that right side. I don’t think ‘41’ ever even saw the ball. I don’t know if he’ll see it on film based off how good that throw was. But it just had to come down with the play. It was a dime. I just had to make the play.”
On Green Bay’s second touchdown drive, he converted a fourth-and-1 and forced a pass-interference penalty in the end zone. To start the second half, he accounted for 68 of the Packers’ 80 yards, including a 49-yard catch and run on third-and-7 that helped make the score 28-3. Finally, in the fourth quarter, he struck again on another deep ball for a gain of 34 on third-and-4.
In a win at Houston a couple weeks ago, all seven of Green Bay’s third-down conversions went to Adams. It wasn’t quite so lopsided against San Francisco, but Adams moved the chains on four third downs and one fourth down.
The league’s best players are at their best in key situations. That’s Adams. He doesn’t have the freakish size of Atlanta’s Julio Jones or Seattle’s DK Metacalf. He doesn’t have the rocket speed of Kansas City’s Tyreek Hill or the player the Packers flirted with before the trade deadline, Houston’s Will Fuller. All Adams does is win every route on the tree against any defense thrown at him.
At one point, Adams said he didn’t want to “sound conceited.” But he wasn’t going to shy away from a question about being the best receiver in the NFL. If you’re going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk.
Nobody’s doing it better than Adams.
“Yeah, I think that’s fair to say,” he said. “I think that’s not being conceited; that’s just being confident. I think obviously what I’ve done and what I’m going to continue to do is going to prove that to anybody who isn’t on board with that. But I truly believe that just based off of the work that I’ve put in, the connection I have between my quarterback – it’s not just about me just running a route. If the line isn’t protecting or if the quarterback doesn’t look your way or if the other receivers don’t do their part to pull defenders away, none of what I do can happen. So, at the end of the day, I’ll tell you yes, absolutely, I think I’m the best wide receiver in the game, but there’s a lot of things that go into me being able to make that statement.”
