Davante Adams-Aaron Rodgers reunion? Jets should totally go for it

Two of the best receivers in the league will be on the field Sunday night when the Jets face the Raiders in Las Vegas, but looking at the stats you’d hardly know it. Davante Adams and Garrett Wilson aren’t anywhere close to the league’s leaders in any categories that matter and their production, eerily similar, has them disguised as pedestrian players.

They both have the same problem, too.

They’re not playing with Aaron Rodgers.

Adams isn’t because he was traded away from Green Bay two years ago to join forces with another of his buddies, Derek Carr, and even though that resulted in an NFL-leading 14 touchdown catches in 2022, Carr was jettisoned in the offseason. That left Adams relying on a string of subpar quarterbacks and incompetent coaching to find him in the offense.

Wilson isn’t because, well, that Achilles injury which relegated Rodgers to the role of cheerleading shaman left his statistical fate in the hands of Zach Wilson and Nathaniel Hackett.

See? Same problem.

Perhaps there could be a similar solution, too.

While the Jets get ready to face Adams this week, they should also be preparing to chase him this offseason. There were rumblings of overtures made to bring Adams to New York and eventually pair him back with Rodgers just before this year’s trade deadline, but those conversations didn’t result in any deals because Mark Davis, owner of the Raiders, decided to clean out his coaching staff rather than his roster. So far, through one week at least, that seems to have been the wise choice.

After this season there may be another opportunity for the Jets to wrangle Adams away from Vegas, though. They should definitely pursue that.

Rodgers and Adams would almost certainly sign off on it.

Rodgers spent most of the preseason raving about his connection with Adams and even used that on-field relationship as a measuring stick to illustrate the close bond he was developing with Garrett Wilson.

And just two weeks ago Adams was on “The Rich Eisen Show” when he was asked about Rodgers.

“Ever since we haven’t been teammates, our relationship has gotten stronger,” Adams said. “We try to keep a pretty good line of communication, just because we both obviously miss each other a lot.”

The Jets already put plenty of resources into trying to surround Rodgers with familiar receiving faces for this season, bringing in Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb, but without the quarterback on the field those signings were useless. Lazard has disappointed and Cobb has disappeared. The one elusive piece to making this a true reunion offense was always Adams.

For now, at least, the Jets will be going against him. They still consider Adams among the best in the game.

“Davante is still Davante even though the numbers don’t show that,” cornerback D.J. Reed said. “He’s still a phenomenal receiver. A lot of teams are still doubling him so they have a lot of respect for him and his impact on the field. We’ll have to take it seriously.”

Reed played against Adams when he was in Seattle. Safety Jordan Whitehead said he faced him a few times with the Bucs.

“His start and his route running is nice,” Whitehead told Newsday. “How fast he gets off the ball, he lures you to sleep and then he comes out of his breaks super quick. Then he’s got great hands. He’s the complete package.”

The Jets also have safety Adrian Amos who covered him in Chicago and was later teammates with Adams in Green Bay. Amos has been schooling up the Jets secondary on the things that make Adams so special.

This will be Sauce Gardner’s first time covering Adams, and he’ll likely draw that assignment the most.

The one person the defenders haven’t asked for tips on covering Adams, oddly enough, is the player who likely knows him the best.

“I might have to hit up Aaron,” Reed said when asked by Newsday if he’d yet spoken to Rodgers. “I definitely have to hit up AR to steal some things. I didn’t even think of that. That’s actually smart.”

Almost as smart as bringing Adams here next season.

Imagine what it would be like to have Adams and Garrett Wilson both running routes and catching passes from Rodgers in 2024?

“That would be crazy,” Whitehead told Newsday when asked how a team might defend that. ”I remember my rookie year, this wasn’t as good as that would be, but Julio [Jones] and [Mohamed] Sanu were in Atlanta. They were in the division and I was with the Bucs. It was like both of those dudes were big, just two fast guys, and you had to game plan.

“But that would be crazy.”

So much so that it would be crazy to not try to make it happen.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.