Davante Adams is entering his eighth season in the NFL where he has fully established himself as one of the league’s best wideouts. Over the past five seasons, Adams has averaged 92 catches, 1,127 yards, and 12 touchdowns per year in Green Bay, forming a tremendous partnership with Aaron Rodgers.
The two have not so subtly hinted that this might be their Last Dance together, as Rodgers has made clear his desire to leave the Packers and Adams’ contract is up at the end of this season. For now, though, their focus is on righting the ship in Green Bay for this season after a 38-3 loss to the Saints in Week 1 gave them plenty to look at going into a Monday night showdown with Detroit in Week 2.
Adams spoke with Uproxx this week over the phone on behalf of Courtyard by Marriott about the focus of the team after that loss to New Orleans, learning how to not get too low or too high during the regular season, how he became one of the league’s most consistent receivers, his favorite young wideouts in the NFL, and more.
Obviously Week 1 didn’t go as y’all planned, but you got Detroit coming up and what’s been the focus as y’all look to bounce back and get back to .500 here?
Well, that’s a helluva way to put it. I mean, the focus is just getting back to playing Packer football, man. We know we got to do. It was just a weird game kind of started off weird and got away from us early. So, gotta come out swinging earlier on in that game, and, you know, take care of business, it’s pretty simple. We got the personnel, it’s just about playing better situationally and getting a good rhythm going early. So, looking forward to doing that.
Absolutely. What have you learned in your career about dealing with the mental grind the season and the ups and downs and trying to stay level? Because I know that’s something a lot guys talk about as important is being able to not overreact to big wins or big losses and understand that it’s a long season.
Yeah, it’s a really, really long season, even longer this year with the added game. So really it’s just about — I mean everybody understands that it’s tough to win a game in this league. So if you don’t come out firing and have your hard hat on early in the game and taking care of business, things can get out of hand and get away from you quick. I mean, the Saints are a really good football team. So, to bounce back for this week it’s just having that mentality of everybody doing everything that they can and giving it all that they have while they’re out there on the field and not letting any moment slip by. Because you can’t get plays back, so you always want to make sure you put your best film out there every opportunity you get. So that’s basically the consensus of the team right now everybody understands what they got to do. You know, I feel like certain people did play well, too. There’s a lot of things that we can take that we did well out there. Just the overall execution wasn’t there and it reflected in the score.
When you look back at the player you were when you came into the league to the player you are now, where do you feel like you have improved the most as a receiver as you’ve become one of the league’s premier guys at that position?
I mean this position, man, is so much about confidence. So the more you do in a row, the more confidence you build, and it’s about being consistent. So that’s what I pride myself on is being the most consistent wideout in the NFL. And I just want to get out there and show my fans, my coaches, my teammates, everybody that I can continue to go out there, week in and week out and do it. The more you do that and establish it to yourself, the easier it becomes and the more you’re able to sustain that. At least that’s my mentality, just continue to do it more and more times and it builds that within you to where you don’t feel like you can be stopped. And, if you do get stopped, it was just by chance or, you know it was the coverage dictated the ball go elsewhere or whatever the case may be. But I just always try to put my best foot forward and make sure my film always looks as good as possible.
There’s so much talent at that position now. Who are some of the young receivers around the league that you’ve been most impressed with in the last few years that have come in?
Obviously Justin Jefferson looked really, really good last year. Calvin Ridley has shown the world that he’s a baller. I mean, I don’t know if he counts as young, I don’t know, maybe like four or five years or something like that — I don’t know, the years are going by too fast, I can’t even keep up anymore. But there’s a lot of good young wideouts out there, man. Honestly, there’s dudes that are emerging — Scary Terry [McLaurin] out there, he’s doing his thing. A lot, a lot of good young wideouts man. It’s almost too many to count, to be honest. Excited to see Courtland Sutton get back out there this year. He’s another really good young talent, so it’ll be fun, man. A lot, a lot of good talent around the league.
You’ve got this partnership with Courtyard. How did that come about for you and how can fans get in on experiences like the the Super Bowl Sleepover?
Well, basically, what it what it is is, you know, the official NFL hotel, Courtyard by Marriott, they have a huge thing that the fans have been loving for years called the Courtyard Super Bowl Sleepover contest. That’s where a lucky winner will have opportunity to stay the night in a suite that they turn into a hotel room, and basically have the whole night to experience sleeping inside the Super Bowl stadium, while waking up there and being the first one to experience the Super Bowl morning and kick off their day in there. They’ve jazzed the rooms up and made them look really nice, so the whole experience is really cool. And, you know it’s just a thing that we, myself and Courtyard, both believe in, you know. The fans hitting the road and getting back in the stadium and packing the houses out just for that ultimate football experience. Fans can enter by submitting their story on social with the hashtag #CourtyardSuperBowlContest. So they want to get out there, whether they’re traveling far or it’s a close game or whatever, share your experience and then from there Courtyard and be able to assess who’s most fitting to be the lucky winner to experience that.
You get to travel around the country and kind of visits in different places around the league. What’s your favorite NFL city that you you’ve gotten the chance to go to in your career — maybe it’s somewhere that you get to go to kind of regularly or just a couple of times?
Well I got different spots for different reasons. Chicago has nice shopping, cool city to just walk around, go eat. New Orleans has the best food, for sure. Dallas, great stadium great vibe and energy in there. It’s always really electric in that building. So a few different spots, different reasons why I like them, but I’d say the food probably leads over everything, just because, I mean, I love me some Southern cooking. So getting down in New Orleans that’d probably be my favorite one, and being in that dome is always pretty cool too.
I was gonna ask about the food. I do a lot of NBA stuff and I know guys — cause they’re traveling, day after day — so a lot of guys have a go to restaurant, that way if it’s in that city, they are going to go there. Do you have that, where like if you’re on the road and you know you need a meal, is there a spot that you know that you’re going to go if it’s in that city?
I think is is not necessarily the exact same spot but we typically, whether we go as a widout group or, you know, just a few random teammates, I love to hit a steakhouse — you know Ruth’s Chris, Mastro’s, Fleming’s. You know, just because we don’t really have in Green Bay, believe it or not, there isn’t the most options out here to go and just eat at a really nice steakhouse. We got a couple of different spots, but you know some of the bigger chain steakhouses out there or some of the bigger cities that we get to travel to, so I take advantage and try to hit those up when we get on the road.
And what is your New Orleans spot. Is there a spot that you really like there because you mentioned that one specifically as your favorite for Southern food?
I’ll try different stuff, man. Pappadeaux’s, I mean, there’s a few different spots. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to — last year, we couldn’t even go — so I forgot a few of the names of the spots that I would hit, but that’s nothin that old Google doesn’t figure out for me when I pull up, always pointing me in the right direction.