Adams Goes from ‘Bust’ to Potential Bust

“To see that he acknowledges it at that level, there’s really not any words I can put together to say how much it means to me,” Davante Adams said of Aaron Rodgers' praise.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Aaron Rodgers played alongside Pro Football Hall of Famers Brett Favre and Charles Woodson.

To Rodgers, Davante Adams is even better than those legends.

“When you start stacking up the numbers for Davante, it’s mind-blowing,” Rodgers said on Saturday after breaking Favre’s record for most touchdown passes in NFL history. “I really feel like he’s the best player I’ve played with, and I said that to him the other night, actually. I was just thinking about him and having a lot of gratitude for our friendship and the fact I get to play with him for so many years now. I just felt like I wanted to tell him that because it’s true.”

It was a touching gesture between two record-setting stars, the legendary quarterback and the legend-in-the-making receiver.

Not bad for a player who many fans deemed a bust after his first two seasons in the NFL.

“For sure, man. It caught me off-guard when he texted me that the other day,” Adams, a second-round pick in 2014 who turned 29 last week, said on Wednesday. “He texted me that before he said it; I think after the game was the first (time he said it publicly). But, yeah, it catches me off-guard a little bit just because I feel like what we don’t do enough as men in general is express the way we feel about one another or about the way he feels, whether it’s good or bad. So, to hear something like that out of the blue – there was no conversation that led up to it or anything like that, it was just strictly from his heart, something he was thinking about – it means a lot to me as a player.”

Last week against Cleveland, while Rodgers set a major Packers record, Adams made NFL history by becoming the first player with eight career games of 10-plus catches, 100-plus yards and two-plus touchdowns.

Adams enters Sunday’s game against Minnesota with 106 receptions. With four catches, he’ll have his third season of 110-plus receptions – tied with Antonio Brown and DeAndre Hopkins for second-most in NFL history behind Wes Welker’s five.

“He’s a special player,” Rodgers said. “Nobody I’ve seen has that ability to continue to reinvent himself, even inside of a game, and set routes up the way he does. He’s a fantastic player. He gives you so many great plays during a game.”

One of those great plays was their first touchdown of last week’s game, a sublime connection in which Adams and Rodgers diagnosed the Browns’ blitz and ad-libbed without so much as a word, wink or nod. They are the marriage of a great quarterback, a great receiver, a great connection and a desire to be unstoppable.

They’ve been especially unstoppable of late, a run that started with last month’s loss at the Vikings. After scoring three touchdowns in his first nine games, Adams has found the end zone seven times in the last five games. With 10 touchdowns, Adams needs two more scores in the final two games to reach 12. If he gets there, he’ll join Hall of Famers Jerry Rice (five seasons), Calvin Johnson (four), Randy Moss (four) and Terrell Owens as the only players in NFL history with at least 12 touchdown receptions in four of his first eight seasons.

Since entering the NFL in 2014, Adams has 652 receptions for 7,930 yards and 72 touchdowns. Only Hall of Famers Rice, Moss, Johnson and Marvin Harrison, and future Hall of Famer Larry Fitzgerald, reached at least 600 receptions, 8,000 receiving yards and 70 receiving touchdowns in his first eight seasons.

Since the start of the 2016 season, Adams ranks first with 564 receptions, fourth with 7,001 yards and first with 68 touchdowns – a preposterous 11 more than any other player.

When you’re reaching all-time levels, when you’re dominating every week, when you’re the focal point of every defensive game plan but deliver anyway, that’s a Hall of Fame resume. That’s why it’s not far-fetched to rank Adams ahead of two Gold Jacket winners. At this rate, Adams will have a Gold Jacket of his own.

“To see that he acknowledges it at that level, there’s really not any words I can put together to say how much it means to me,” Adams said. “It just continues to push me. I think with certain people, hearing stuff like that, being the best, whether it’s in general or the best a certain player of a certain magnitude has played with, there’s two responses, typically: You either fall back and get comfortable, because you feel like you’ve reached a certain point, or it drives you. And I feel like it continues to push me.”