GREEN BAY, Wis. – As if his second NFL season hadn’t been difficult enough, Davante Adams saw it end prematurely – with him as a spectator during the Green Bay Packers’ NFC divisional playoff loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday night.
By Monday morning, the Packers wide receiver was looking ahead to 2016 – with plans to put the disappointing year behind him and make the kinds of plays he did during his final two games, before suffering a sprained MCL in his right knee during the team’s NFC wild card playoff win at Washington on Jan. 10.
“Obviously it didn’t go the way I wanted it to go individually or for the team,” Adams acknowledged after the Packers’ season-ending team meeting broke and players packed up their belongings in the locker room. “But there’s still a lot of things you can take from it and use positively going into next year.
Adams began the year having had high expectations placed upon him by quarterback Aaron Rodgers and coach Mike McCarthy, who’d termed him the team’s offseason MVP, then was thrust into the starting lineup when Pro Bowl wide receiver Jordy Nelson suffered a season-ending torn ACL in his right knee in an Aug. 23 preseason game at Pittsburgh.
Instead, plagued by a persistent, early-season ankle injury and felled by his late-season knee injury, Adams ended up with just 50 regular-season receptions for 483 yards (9.7-yard average) and one touchdown, despite being targeted 93 times in 13 games. Rodgers targeted Randall Cobb (129) and James Jones (100) more often, but they both played in all 16 regular-season games.
The shame of it for Adams was that he played his best two games at the end of the season, catching four passes for 54 yards in the Jan. 3 regular-season finale against Minnesota and four passes for 48 yards, including a touchdown, in the win over the Redskins before injuring his knee. Rodgers went so far as to call Adams “Mr. January” with the belief that he’d be a difference-maker when it mattered most.
Instead, Adams wasn’t able to go against the Cardinals, and after Cobb suffered a bruised lung in the first quarter that landed him in a Phoenix-area hospital overnight, the Packers were without their top four receivers from the start of the year (Nelson, Cobb, Adams and rookie Ty Montgomery). Adams said he didn’t know whether he would have been healthy enough to play in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game at Carolina had Green Bay not lost in overtime at Arizona.
“Obviously it sucks to feel like you can’t do anything to help the team,” Adams said. “But [I] still learned a lot and had a lot of fun with this team. You figure out a lot about yourself going through adversity.
“Having two [injuries] that really stopped me from playing, I’ve never really had to deal with that before, but you learn to put up with it, you learn to stay mentally tough throughout that process and I think that’s something that could help me [going forward], as a guy who plans on playing a long time in this league.”
Adams insisted that his self-confidence never wavered this season, and he reiterated that position Monday. A second-round pick in 2014, the 6-foot-1, 215-pound wideout remains very much in the Packers’ plans going forward and just turned 23 on Christmas Eve, meaning he clearly still has lots of upside.
“I know what I’m capable of, and I know those are the types of things I can do. So it’s not like I personally needed that,” Adams said of his late-season strong showings. “But at the same time, it’s something that’s good to put on display and kind of remind people. My coaches and my quarterback, they already know. The outside people, they’re the ones who need reminding. My teammates and everybody [inside the team] already know what I’m capable of.
“Things didn’t go how I wanted them to, but you have to learn to block that out and be positive and figure out what you can do next.”