Jets receiver Davante Adams arrived in New York a week ago. On Sunday night, he got his first glimpse of how the team operates during a game.
He didn’t like what he saw.
The energy wasn’t there. The enjoyment wasn’t there. And so, after the 37-15 loss to the Steelers, Adams decided to speak his mind.
“It’s not really my personality to see something that’s not right and to just let it go on, regardless of whether it’s from the coaches, the players, management, support staff, whoever,” Adams told reporters on Wednesday. “So obviously, there was a lack of energy and urgency out there, and it was apparent especially coming from, you know, I’ve played on teams that have that winning culture, and just basically I just took a moment to let them know like I had reservations about speaking up too early and being too vocal too early, but I felt like, you know, in my mind, I said, ‘Eff that,’ because I need to — we don’t have time. And I got to do whatever I got to do to help the team move forward. And lack of energy, I mean, that’s a prerequisite to be able to go out there and have a good year or have a good play, or you know whatever it is.
“So in my mind, it was something where I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I didn’t speak up on it. And, you know, got a lot of good feedback. Which it wasn’t a big ‘rah-rah’ thing. It was just more to bring awareness to it. Because a lot of these guys in here haven’t been anywhere else where they’ve won and have had that urgency it takes in order to be a good team. So, you know, this team being so talented roster-wise, it’s just a waste to have everybody out there and you know to have a dead sideline like that. Breece [Hall] catch a ball and go 60 [yards], and we can’t feed off none of the energy. And those type of plays are supposed to be contagious for the rest of the team.
“So that’s basically what I saw and what I told them is a thing — you know, I’m not here to be the savior. . . . I mean everybody’s sitting here expecting it to be me go out there and put up 200 yards and three [touchdowns]. That’s a storybook ending to it, and obviously that would have been amazing if that happened. But I’m here to help shift this culture more than anything.
“You know, I can go out there and make the plays and try to influence the guys as much as I can, but I’m trying to enforce a winning mindset on these guys. And if you don’t have the energy, which is the least you’ve got to have, I mean you only get 17 games. . . To have only 17 [opportunities] and come out flat like that and essentially give away a game. That’s unacceptable. So, you know, just trying to bring a different type of swag and culture in here.”
Adams said he noticed the lack of energy throughout the game, but the problem didn’t dawn on him until it was over.
He said that the Raiders had the “juice” he was referring to; they just had plenty of other problems.
And he was referring to something simple. Celebrating after plays. Congratulating players. Being excited about the good things that happen, in the hopes that more good things will happen.
“I don’t care if they got to be fake,” Adams said. He just wants to see it.
Adams said the reaction was “amazing,” not only from the players but from the staff and even the owner.
“I could see in everybody’s eyes that it was something they had never heard or been exposed to, and you know that’s part of the problem,” Adams said.
Adams had to wonder why they hadn’t heard or been exposed to it, given that Aaron Rodgers has been with the team for nearly a season and a half. Even though he was injured for almost all of the 2023 regular season, he’s been around. He’s been in position to witness the energy or lack thereof, and to do something about it.
Then again, maybe he has tried to do it. But if he’s using words like “denouement” and “sanguine” (as he did seconds apart in his Wednesday press conference, before adding “eloquence” and “esoteric” later), it might be hard for anyone to know what the hell he’s talking about.
Regardless, Rodgers has been there. At some level, Adams has to be thinking, “Aaron, what the f—k?”
Will Adams’s speech work? The test is coming on Sunday, against a Patriots team that is trying to prove it isn’t soft.
“If we go out the next game and we have the same type of issues, then it’s a bigger issue,” Adams said Wednesday. “And me, regardless if I just got here, I’m a leader of this football team and whether or not every single person in there sees it that way, that’s how I see it and that’s my responsibility and that’s something I take seriously.”
That’s good for the Jets. The fact that Rodgers apparently hadn’t done anything about the issue before Adams arrived isn’t.
