The 90 to 1 Green Bay Packers roster countdown: No. 30 – Montravius Adams

The trade of Mike Daniels has cleared the path for the former third-round pick.

The Green Bay Packers, and their 90 players on the roster, are in the midst of their first training camp under coach Matt LaFleur. In an annual tradition from my 11 years at Packer Report, I rank the players in order of importance from No. 90 to No. 1. This isn’t just a listing of the team’s best players. Our rankings take into account talent, importance of the position, depth at the position, salary and draft history. More than the ranking, we hope you learn something about each player. (Note: The start of this series can be found with my former employer.)

No. 30: DT Montravius Adams ($872,194 cap)

In the original version of the list, Adams was No. 49 and facing a make-or-break training camp. Now, with the release of veteran Mike Daniels, Adams has gone from potential bubble player to likely starter.

That’s not at all what defensive coordinator Mike Pettine pictured when he started working with Adams a year-plus ago.

“If I had to vote somebody or say who’s most improved from a year ago, it would be Montravius,” Pettine said during the first week of training camp. “When I first got here and met him in the spring, my opinion wasn’t real high, and he knows that. It was one where we challenged him and I think (defensive line coach) Jerry Montgomery has done an outstanding job with ‘Mont.’ ‘Mont’ has taken the challenge.”

It might have been disconcerting to not feel the love from your boss, but Adams used it as motivation.

“For me, it was great,” Adams said. “Every player in this room should be competitive or they shouldn’t be here. With him saying that, it was like, ‘I am going to prove to him that I am who I think I am’ and not who anybody else thinks but who I think I am. That’s what I’m here for every day.”

A strong finish to last season helped change the dynamic between coach and player. Adams then shed almost 20 pounds during the offseason. While he’s listed at 304 pounds, he said he was closer to 295 for the start of training camp.

“I just wanted to be able to run,” Adams said. “Wherever I wanted to go, I wanted to be able to make it and be able to make it efficiently. Be able to play every down that they need me, not just be able to be like one down, two down. Now I feel like with me in here, I can make this play and run down the field, make that play and come back and still play.”

He did it through a combination of diet and exercise. One workout he recalled was a series of 10 200-yard sprints.

“Me and my trainer, we got after it. I wouldn’t say we had a good time,” Adams said with a smile.

A third-round draft pick in 2017, Adams has 1.5 sacks and 31 tackles in 23 career games. After playing only 66 snaps as a rookie – a season derailed by a training camp foot injury that stunted his development – Adams played 212 snaps in 2018. For perspective, undrafted free agent Tyler Lancaster, who spent the first month of the season on the practice squad, played 271 snaps. When Adams was on the field, he was active. He finished the season with 26 tackles, 1.5 sacks and five stuffs (a tackle at or behind the line of scrimmage vs. the run). That led to defensive line-best rates of 8.2 snaps per tackle and 42.4 snaps per stuff for the fastest 300-pounder at the 2017 Scouting Combine.

Of the five defensive linemen who played in more than four games, Adams ranked last in ProFootballFocus.com’s run-stop percentage (a metric that measures impact tackles) and fourth in PFF’s pass-rushing productivity (which measures sacks, hits and hurries per pass-rushing snap). Nonetheless, Montgomery sees a player whose arrow is pointed up.

“I don’t know if you guys watched, but he was a lot different player last year than he was the year before,” Montgomery said during OTAs. “So, he’s taken the right steps. The guy came back in tremendous shape. He looks a lot different body-wise than he did a year ago. Like, he understands now this is how he provides for his family and I need to do all that I can to be the best player I can be. He’s done that. He’s working every day. Is he there, no? But neither is anybody else this time of year. But he’s definitely a lot further along today than he as last year at this time.”

The coaches’ praise means a lot, but Adams knows the pressure is on following the trade of Daniels.

“It’s something that makes you smile but we all know I’ve still got to be consistent,” Adams said. “So, put it in the back and keep working.”