The Raiders Have Already Waited Too Long to Trade Davante Adams

The wide receiver shows the danger of not understanding a team’s competitive cycle.

Adams has been productive since coming to Las Vegas, but the team has had back-to-back seasons under .500. / Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images

Davante Adams insists he is happy to be a Raider, which would put him way ahead of most people who stay too long in Las Vegas. If he is truly happy there, then good for him.

Nonetheless, Adams is perhaps the best current example of why acquiring and keeping a great player can be a huge mistake.

This is not his fault. Adams has been exactly what the Raiders thought they were acquiring two years ago: a consistent, healthy, All-Pro player. But talent acquisition in the NFL is never just about acquiring talent. It is also about cost, fit and timing.

Two years ago, the Raiders traded their first- and second-round picks in the 2022 draft for Adams. As part of the deal, they signed him to a five-year contract extension at what was, at the time, top-of-the-market pay ($28 million APY). Adams was worthy of the check, but he was also 29. This was a deal you make when you’re a Super Bowl contender, and the Raiders were not.

The Raiders were coming off a 10–7 season, but they had been outscored by 65 points that year. They had one of the worst defenses in the NFL. The timing for a deal like that was wrong, and the cost of the acquisition made it even more wrong. Giving up their top two draft picks and paying Adams limited their means of improving immediately.

They have gone 14–20 since the deal. Now Adams is 31. The Raiders are starting Gardner Minshew II at quarterback, and Minshew is the league’s ultimate transition quarterback: good enough to run out there, but not a long-term solution. They have a new coach, Antonio Pierce, and new general manager, Tom Telesco. This is the time to take some cap-hit medicine and accumulate assets, and part of that process should include trading Adams. Yet he is still on the team.

Incredibly (though not to my longtime readers) nothing in this column is particularly insightful. It is actually all quite obvious, and has been for a while.

So why can’t the Raiders see it?

There are always internal factors that the public never sees. But in this case, the public factors tell a pretty clear story.

Two years ago, Raiders owner Mark Davis did what he usually does: He convinced himself that a splashy hire was the answer. He brought in Josh McDaniels and McDaniels’s chosen general manager, Dave Ziegler, and gave them the run of the place.

McDaniels had a reputation for … what’s the term I’m looking for … oh, yes: pissing people off. It dogged him after the Denver Broncos fired him. He managed to piss people off with the Indianapolis Colts without even officially taking the job.

McDaniels convinced himself that he would succeed as a head coach if he just prioritized personal relationships. By extension, anybody who gave him a second chance believed that as well.

Adams wanted to join the Raiders to play with his college quarterback, Derek Carr, who wanted Adams. That created a tempting combination for McDaniels: He could acquire a terrific player and earn the trust of his two most important players. 

The deal also created a tempting combination for Davis. His father, Al, probably loved star receivers more than any owner in NFL history, and Mark Davis has taken pride in spending lavishly on his teams. Davis did it when he hired Jon Gruden, he did it when he hired Becky Hammon to coach the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, and he was probably happy to do it to acquire Adams.

McDaniels soured on Carr. Davis soured on McDaniels—and spent lavishly to get rid of him.

Pierce and Telesco are in charge now. They should see this as the rebuild that it is—and part of that rebuild should include trading Adams for draft picks.

Perhaps it will. But there are still internal dynamics at play. Since Davis took control of the Raiders in 2011, he has fired five full-time head coaches. Only Gruden made it to a fourth year. Davis would have kept Gruden longer if he could have; Gruden’s old emails forced Davis to fire him. But Davis has fired two other coaches, Dennis Allen and McDaniels, in the middle of a season. He fired Hue Jackson after one year and did not retain Rich Bisaccia after a 7–5 interim stint.

Davis has a pretty long, pretty clear track record at this point: He sours on people and then he chases big names, no matter how much it costs him. Telesco was just fired by the Los Angeles Chargers. Pierce did not start coaching in the NFL until 2022, and he has never been an NFL coordinator. Put any thoughts about their competence aside. Based on Davis’s history, Telesco and Pierce probably feel more urgency to win this season than they should based on the roster.

Adams is a heck of a player. He should have another productive year. But when it ends, he will be 32. It is hard to envision a scenario in which the Raiders are true contenders and he is still a star. If the Raiders keep him around, his time with the Raiders can be summed up fairly simply: right player, wrong move, wrong move, wrong move.