GREEN BAY – Aaron Rodgers always means what he says.
So last Sunday when he said after the Packers’ victory over the Titans that Davante Adams belongs in the conversation with soon-to-be Hall of Famer Charles Woodson as the best player Rodgers has ever played with, he wasn’t kidding around.
Adams’ reaction to that? “He keeps throwing me off because he’s saying these really nice things about me,” the four-time Pro Bowl receiver said Wednesday.
OK, so that was a joke. But Adams’ real reaction to those comments from one of his closest friends, teammates and admirers says a lot about what makes Adams the player he is.
“It fuels me,” Adams continued. “I think for some people it can kind of slow them down or make them feel like they’ve arrived, but being the best or being told that I’m the best or people thinking that, it doesn’t scare me at all.
“I feel like I embrace that and when I hear those positive things, especially from a guy like Aaron, it just pushes me to go even harder.”
Rodgers and Head Coach Matt LaFleur have pushed him, too, schematically, asking him to add more and different things to the offense. That’s not only made it harder to cover him, it’s made the Packers’ entire unit more difficult to defend, the way Rodgers sees it.
“The more that we give him, the more we get out,” Rodgers said. “The more latitude that we give him within the offense, the more production we have.
“He’s not a paper football kind of guy. He’s not an X’s and O’s kind of guy. He does so many crazy, talented things between the lines that the offense, just any offense in general, doesn’t have the creativity on paper that he can add to route schemes.”
As the Packers look to take that creativity to another level in the postseason, they’ll wrap up what has evolved into an epic regular season statistically for the two headliners of the Packers’ offense Sunday in Chicago with several milestones, franchise records and the like on the line.
