When Davante Adams asked to be traded from the Green Bay Packers to the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022, the Packers had a strong offer on the table to keep him around. The lack of a previous extension was a point in the decision, but the lack of quarterback certainty was a big factor as well.
At that point, the relationship between Aaron Rodgers and the franchise wasn’t in a great place, there was no certainty about Jordan Love’s future, and the Raiders still had Derek Carr, a close friend who played college football with Adams at Fresno State.
In hindsight, though, it’s tough for Davante to see how that decision ended up taking him. The Raiders released Derek Carr after just one season, and Love took the quarterback position in Green Bay playing at a high level in the first season after the Aaron Rodgers’ trade to the New York Jets.
Davante Adams appeared on The Rush Podcast, hosted by his Raiders’ teammate Maxx Crosby, and talked about the entire situation.
Tough decision
Davante Adams repeatedly said he doesn’t regret the decision to ask for a trade, but it surely seems like he does. Explaining his thought process at the time, Davante shows how much Love progressed through his years as a backup.
“I’m the poster child for ‘You make a decision and you live with it.’ I don’t regret anything. Not that I doubted him (Love) in any way, cause I’d definitely seen it, the potential in there,” Adams said. “But it was similar to what we saw early in the season, what I was able to watch while I was in Green Bay. As Aaron was in there, all the reps that I’m getting are gonna be with him. And we built up what we built. So basing it off of that and having a young guy that had no experience, for me it was tough to stay in that position and say ‘This is what’s best for me for sure.'”
Contract situation
Davante Adams wanted a contract extension in 2021, but the Packers’ offer was too low for one of the top receivers in football.
He stayed locked in, played at a high level, but it was hard to go back in 2022, even with a strong offer under a franchise tag.
“Especially with all the back and forth of everything with the Packers, contract stuff the year before. I basically told them like, if y’all can figure this out now, going into the last year of my deal, cause I had no security, I was playing under worse than a tag, my last year in Green Bay. I was like the 20th highest paid receiver in the league. It was crazy,” Adams added.
“Aaron has his stuff kind of back and forth every year, I’ll ignore all of that if we can just do this a year early, knock this out, and I’ve proven it, back to back All-Pros. The more I play, it’s not gonna make it easier to figure this out. And then they threw some deal at me that was like, it barely made me even play for them that year. But I was like, ‘I’m gonna be there, I’m gonna be in camp, you’re not even gonna notice that I’m irritated or nothing. I’m gonna be the player I’m supposed to be.”
Adams played at an extremely high level in 2021, leading up to the Packers tagging him in the 2022 offseason.
“Then obviously I went there and did that. It raised up the stakes and made it tougher,” he said. “So now the Packers wanted to figure it out, and I’m going back and forth. How do I distinguish if this is the right thing to do versus going where I feel like it’s definitely the right thing to do, playing with a guy that I already have experience with, we put up a lot of touchdowns and yards in those two years we played. Obviously it’s college, but I don’t have anything to base it off of with Jordan, so I’m playing the numbers, what makes the most sense. Derek was at one point in the league an MVP candidate. You can not like Derek personally, but you gotta respect what he’s done. He solidified my decision to come here. That’s a really wordy way of saying at the time when I was there, I hadn’t necessarily seen enough to say ‘This is for sure what I should do.’
Praise
After two years, everything changed. Now Gardner Minshew is projected to start in Las Vegas after a failed Jimmy Garoppolo experience, while Love is established as a high-end starter.
“But in hindsight, we talked about it, the kid is a f****** baller, man. I’m so happy for him,” Adams mentioned. “I haven’t really had a chance to truly sit down and talk to him, but I wanna tell him at some point. I definitely don’t regret changing, but I’m super proud of what you’ve done, and if there was a way I could pull you over here and drag you with me, that would’ve been cool too. We’ve obviously seen what he did at the end of the year. I don’t regret what I did, but at the same time, you look back and, ‘that boy is kinda balling right now.”
Davante Adams made a lot of money and played at a high level in two years with the Raiders. But it’s fair to say that things haven’t happened how he projected, and Green Bay would have been a better place to keep the career trajectory he wanted to build.
