On various occasions during the Receiver series on Netflix, Raiders receiver Davante Adams came off as a guy who didn’t really want to stay in Las Vegas for 2024 (or, for that matter, 2023). Throw in the recent chatter about a reunion with Aaron Rodgers as well as Adams’s comments about wanting Tom Brady to unretire and join the Raiders, and it feels like Adams isn’t happy with the status quo in Sin City.
For now, that’s not the case.
“I don’t live my life in the mindset of ‘things may get bad,’” Adams told reporters on Wednesday, via Tashan Reed of TheAthletic.com. “I like to think it’s a fresh slate. I’ve got a whole new mentality. I didn’t come into last year in a bad place; it was just kind of the way the cookie crumbled. You saw raw emotion. That was just a genuine look at what we were going through. . . . I’m in a really good place right now.”
The key words are “right now.” By the time the trade deadline approaches, the Raiders could once again be on the outside looking in, and a team on the inside could be looking to grab Adams out of Nevada.
Making a trade more plausible is the fact that, come 2025, Adams’s salary shoots to $35.64 million. Unless he agrees to take a steep pay cut, he’ll be released in the offseason, and he’ll become a free agent.
Still, his future depends largely on how the Raiders perform this year. Adams continues to praise coach Antonio Pierce, and Adams is happy to be reunited with offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, who has spent seven seasons with Adams.
“It feels a little bit more like the Green Bay years because I’m back in that offense with Luke now,” Adams said. “I’ve retained basically like 85 percent of this offense from when I played back in it in ’21. Having that familiarity just helps and relaxes you a little bit.”
Winning helps, too. If the Raiders don’t, the frustration will return — and Adams could end up with the Jets or somewhere else by the Tuesday after Week 9.