Aaron Rodgers Says Raiders Aren't Using Davante Adams Right, Explains Proper Way To Utilize Him

And Jimmy, you know, Devontae Adams afterwards, after his 46-yard appearance, with a shoulder injury lingering, hasn't been able to practice, he said, if we're only going to throw me the ball when I have single coverage, I'm only going to have 22 catches in a year. He said, we have to figure out how to give me the ball more even after a win. I don't think he was taking a shot at anybody. I think he was just talking a matter of fact. So Devontae doesn't have like this massive night. They still win. Interesting time for the Raiders right now. Definitely us, you know, still a receiver like that. Once again, we always talk about players who change the math. He's definitely one of those guys and he'll be out there. He'll be drawing shell coverage over the top of them or double team. So yeah, you have to scheme up ways to still get him the ball. Just like we saw with Jamar Chase, when he was kind of made some comments, you saw they made it a point to get him the ball. So Josh McDaniels, even last year, I think it was early in the year, it took him a while to really start feeding Devontae how they should. But he's a guy who's going to create space. I don't care how many guys you put on him, it's going to be a point in the route where he's open. Joining us now is a man who threw a lot of balls to Devontae Adams, no matter how many people were covering him and no matter what the play was called. A ball was potentially going to 17 in a massive moment from this man's hand. This man, four-time NFL MVP. This man, new quarterback for the New York Jets. This man, walking faster than any human has ever walked after tearing his Achilles. This man gives nicknames that start jerseys in pharmaceutical companies. Ladies and gentlemen, Aaron Rodgers. What's up, dude? Hey, what's going on? Hey, great to see you. Let's piggyback off what we were just talking about. Devontae Adams, after the game, was asked about his production last night. Had 46 yards. Then he said, if we're only going to throw me the ball when I'm single coverage, I'm only going to have 22 catches. At what stage did Devontae start becoming the focal point of defenses? And at what stage do you, as a quarterback with Devontae Adams, just have to not care about any of that? I mean, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. And they say, you know what? We're going to play two-trail. We're going to play a two-man trail on him. And we had two hitch conversions against two-trail because literally they thought there's no way they're going to throw this ball. We got a guy underneath. We got Harrison Smith over the top. And I just said – we talked on the sidelines. He goes, hey, I think we can fit a couple quick hole shots in there and we did. And we're just kind of laughing because it just – they don't expect that to happen. But you have to kind of stick with certain plays and trust that Devante is going to be open because that's – when you've got an offense and you're trying to be dynamic, you've got to get the ball to your best player. So listen, I mean, it's tough. They try to take him away. He's going to be the focus of every single game plan. But you've got to still find ways to get him probably more than four opportunities. I think Jimmy G is going to be pumped to hear all that, by the way, like legitimately coming from you. It would make sense. Go ahead, AJ. I'm going to – No, legit. I'm saying like he's probably going to listen and be like, OK. Like that makes sense. Because he wants Devante to be great too. You know what I mean? I don't think he wants to deal with that. Don't you think, Aaron? Yeah. Yeah, I agree. OK, good. All right, sweet. I think we just made the Rangers better. He threw out the 17. Life's going to get better. Life's going to be better. Stats are going to be better. Offense is going to move smoother. You've got to give him some chances. Go ahead, AJ. I'm not talking specifically about Devante. We know he is different. But have you seen quarterbacks in the past or has it ever happened to you where you feel like, all right, this guy is not getting enough targets. He's a stud. I've got to find a way to get him more looks and you have to force the ball to him. We always hear about this. If a stud, like OBJ or something, comes to a new team, are they going to feel like you have to force some balls just to try to get him going? Is that a real thing? I think there's a few things at play. One, you've got to find ways to get a guy ball early in the game, I think, to get him into the game and get him feeling good about being a part of the mix. We would use run solutions a lot of time as those things. So we have a run call. We have just a little smoke route, a line of scrimmage, or maybe a one-step slant and trying to get him, or a bubble. I always try to get him a ball early in the game, and I did with Stewartie Nelson as well, and Greg Jennings and Driver over the years, where you want your best player, your best skilled player, to feel like they're a part of the game early just so they kind of get in. So get them a couple of balls early to get them going. And again, when you say force feed, it's a different meaning for the guy like Devante compared to somebody else, because he's just more open than probably everybody else on the team. And he has a wider catch radius and all these things that I mentioned earlier. So you have to kind of find a way to get him a ball. Sorry, I got a BFR. I got my BFR going. Is that thing putting your Achilles back together? It sounds like a bunch of people just came out and went, let's go out and piece this through. It's five-minute sequences here. So we set this up so I can, I'm in the middle of rehab, so I have a five-minute window where that's all pumped up. Hell yeah. We appreciate it. So in 10 minutes, you're going to hear that noise again if we're still doing this. Hey, sounds good to me. But I appreciate all this information because I think a lot of us, whenever we hear like, hey, you only had this amount of targets and then somebody could say, well, he was covered and then analytics people will be like, well, he was more covered than this. What you're saying is there's some people that that is not like, it does not matter. And Devante is one of those humans. It's that, but it's also, you know, you got to find ways to take the double off. If you're going to set them up outside and especially outside the numbers, every single split, you're going to get doubled a bunch, right? But if you move in slot, if you motion, if you get them into, you know, number three in a three by one and throw them a bubble, maybe to get going, you know, on that drive where we had three of his four catches, you know, you saw, they put him in the slot and he ran a looky route, Packers are bringing pressure, Preston was kind of, you know, no man's land there. And people were wondering why that was doing it. Well, every now and then you got to bring a pressure and you have to drop an end. Like that's part of it. You know, like Jimmy G did a good job looking off to the right, holding the backer to the right and then, you know, coming back to Devante and then they came back. Yeah, it's beautiful. You get the clip right there. And then came back and he threw him a screen, I think one of the next plays and then you hit him and, you know, on third down the red zone. But it's, you know, you got to, you know, the last part of this is, is something that happened over time. When you have a player that comes from another team, right, you know how much that means to them to go back and play your former team. Like as a quarterback, there's just something that's like, man, I want to get this guy a touchdown. I want to get him a ball. I want to make him feel, you know, because we're all competitors. You want to be, you want to make them feel like, hey, you messed up, you know, you messed up not, not bringing me back. And you just, there's something in you. It's like, I got to throw this guy a touchdown. I got to, you got to get this guy a ball, you know, in the red zone. I got to get this guy a lot of opportunities. So I, you know, look, Devante out of the way, right, why he's a pro and Jimmy's doing the best he can. And he, I felt like he played a pretty clean game last night and they got the win, which is the most important thing. But if you want to be dynamic and we went through stretches like this over the year where, you know, Devante didn't get the amount of, you know, targets that he probably should have in that game. In the following game, it was always like, all right, 15 targets coming your way. Yeah. That's like AJ Brown a couple of weeks ago. And then for our team, the Colts, we had Andre Johnson from the Texans, obviously on the Colts. I think he maybe had like 20 yards the rest of the season against the Texans. He went for like 360, four touchdowns. Andrew Luck was like, where are you? How are you? Let's go ahead and do this entire thing. It's interesting because the humans that are involved.