Adams-Meyers Could Be Raiders Next Great Receiving Duo
Davante Adams and Jakobi Meyers of the Las Vegas Raiders have gotten off to such a good start that longtime members of Raider Nation are hoping they remain together and become another of the outstanding wide receiver duos to play for the Silver and Black.
The best pair was Fred Biletnikoff and Cliff Branch, both members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who played together in the 1970s and were key players as the Raiders beat the Minnesota Vikings, 32-14, in Super Bowl XI at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where Biletnikoff was selected the game’s Most Valuable Player.
Biletnikoff was listed at 6-foot-1 and 180 pounds but probably wasn’t that big. He also was not that fast, and the Raiders drafted him in the second round (No. 11 overall), of the 1965 American Football League out of Florida State.
Raiders Coach and General Manager Al Davis signed him under the goalpost after the Seminoles claimed a 36-19 victory over Oklahoma in the Gator Bowl.
Biletnikoff is second on the Raiders’ all-time list with 589 receptions for 8,874 yards, was a five-time Pro Bowl selection and a first-team All-Pro selection in 1972, in addition to his Super Bowl MVP award, which he earned by catching four passes for 78 yards—including three that he took inside the two-yard-line to set up touchdowns.
However, Biletnikoff’s greatest contribution to the Raiders might have been taking the 5-11 170-pound Branch under his wing when the rookie came to the Raiders as their fourth-round pick in the 1972 NFL Draft out of Colorado.
The speedy Branch, who ran deep on every play for Colorado, passed up a chance to run in the 1972 Olympic Games in Tokyo to attend training camp with the Raiders at the El Rancho Hotel in Santa Rosa, Calif., where Biletnikoff showed him the ropes of playing wide receiver in the NFL.
"In training camp, when Cliff first came in, it was just a matter of: ‘Well, if he’s going to play with us and be on our team, he has to learn how to catch the football,’” Biletnikoff recalled. “I really cared a lot about Cliff from the standpoint that I’d seen so many guys with speed on different teams who just didn’t make it because of the fact that they could never catch the football.
“I didn’t want to see that happen to Cliff, so we struck up a little pact—every day after practice, we were going to spend time out on the field just catching footballs.”
And did it pay off for the Raiders?
Branch is third all-time on the Raiders’ all-time receiving list with 501 catches for 8,865 yards, a 17.3-yard average, and 67 touchdowns, including a 99-yarder, and was selected All-Pro three times and to the Pro Bowl on four occasions while playing on all three of the Raiders’ Super Bowl-winning teams.
“I learned a lot from him,” said Branch, who passed away suddenly in 2019 at the age of 71, a year before he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “I would see him and say: ‘Hey, Father,’ and he would say: ‘Hey, Son.’
“He taught me to catch the ball with my hands, not my chest. ‘Reach out and catch the ball,’ he'd tell me, ‘With your hands.’ He would ask me: ‘Are you catching the ball with your hands?’ and I would say: ‘Yes, Father.’”
Wide receiver Tim Brown is the Raiders’ all-time leading receiver with 1,070 receptions for 14,734 yards and a Raiders’ high 99 touchdown catches in 16 seasons after being the Silver and Black’s No. 1 draft choice (No. 6 overall) in 1988 after an All-American career at Notre Dame.
The 6-foot, 195-pound Brown, another Hall of Famer, was good enough by himself. Still, when the great Jerry Rice came over to the Raiders after 16 brilliant seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, they might have been, for a short time, the most outstanding wide receiver pair in NFL history.
The 6-2, 200-pound Rice, who starred on three Super Bowl champions with the 49ers and was selected MVP of Super Bowl XXIII, played only four seasons with the Raiders but caught 243 passes for 3,286 yards, a 13.5-yard average and 18 touchdowns.
“All of a sudden, you get onto a team, and you’re 21 years old, and here’s a guy (Brown) you’ve been watching on TV for the last couple of years in the NFL,” Raiders Hall of Fame defensive back Charles Woodson. “And it’s like: 'Holy cow, I’m on the same team with a guy I’ve been watching for years.'
“Here comes a couple of years later, and the G.O.A.T, Jerry Rice joins the Raiders, and it’s like: ‘Holy cow, I watched this guy in the Super Bowl catching slants in the end zone. I can’t believe I’m on the same team with this guy.’”
So now we come to the 6-2, 215-pound Adams, a six-time All-Pro, and the 6-2, 200-pound Meyers, who played four seasons with the New England Patriots, the Raiders’ opponent on Sunday at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, after being an undrafted free agent signee by the Patriots in 2018.
Adams has caught 806 passes for 10,009 yards in his NFL career, including 137 receptions for 1,958 yards and 17 touchdowns in 22 games for the Raiders, while Meyers has 260 catches for 3,032 yards and 11 scores in his NFL career, including 25 receptions for 274 yards and three touchdowns in four games with the Raiders.
This could be the next outstanding wide receiver duo for the Silver and Black.
The Silver and Black will stay home at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to play the New England Patriots on Sunday, Oct. 15, at 4:05 p.m. EDT/1:05 p.m. PDT.
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