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At first, Davante Adams sounded like he wanted to shift the narrative Wednesday. After a week of debate about the kind of teammate and leader his quarterback is — and discussion about the dysfunction that enveloped the Green Bay Packers during their second consecutive losing season last year — Adams seemingly was ready to talk about anything but that stuff.
Though former Packers players Greg Jennings and Jermichael Finley have gained media attention recently for criticizing Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers through an article published by Bleacher Report, Adams said all is good in America's Dairy Land.
In a video from Stacey Dales of NFL Media, the Packers star receiver defended his quarterback.
“I feel like I have made it pretty evident about how I feel about it already,” Adams said in the video. “It’s something that I’m really trying to put in the past at this point because it’s nothing even to continue to drag on.”
Then, as quickly as he gets off the line of scrimmage against an over-matched cornerback in press coverage, Adams quickly dug into the article.
“I think you’ve heard from all the people who are relevant at this point and actually matter, which are the people who played with him and played with him recently and had those good relationships with him,” Adams said, subtly pointing out that neither Jennings or Finley have been with the Packers since 2014, when he was drafted.
“I think that it’s been pretty uniform as far as we feel about him — a great leader. All the negative things I’ve heard, I share none of those feelings with those guys. Nobody reached out to me. Nobody reached out to James Jones. Nobody reached out to Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, any of these guys who obviously had a good relationship with him. I think if those people were interviewed about him the story would been a lot different.”
On one hand, what is Adams supposed to say when asked about the controversy surrounding his quarterback? For every reason you can figure out, he can't go up and rip Rodgers. But that also doesn't mean his defense of Rodgers is unbelievable.
It's probably fair to say that Rodgers isn't the easiest to play with. But neither was Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, or any other elite quarterback. They demand the best of those around them. Rodgers is portrayed as riding young players hard in the story and, predictably, not all of them mentioned reacted well to it. It's also safe to assume, though, that Rodgers is hard on every receiver is plays with. And if not for it, Adams might not have developed into one of the NFL's best.
As with all things, there is likely a middle ground here. Maybe Rodgers' leadership style is not for everyone. But, as Adams attests, the quarterback may not be near as bad as he has been portrayed to be of late.
