CINCINNATI – Why Davante Adams isn’t the highest-paid receiver in the NFL is a question for another day. The one that must be asked after the Green Bay Packers receiver caught pass after pass on Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals is this:
How does he keep doing this?
Play after play. Game after game. Season after season.
On another day when just about everyone in the stadium knew where Aaron Rodgers wanted to go with the football, another opponent found almost no way to stop him.
Adams caught 11 passes for a career-high 206 yards and a touchdown in the Packers’ improbable 25-22 overtime victory that included five missed field goals in the final couple of minutes in regulation and overtime. It was the most yards in a game by a Packers receiver in more than seven years and the team's first 200-yard receiving game since Jordy Nelson’s 209 against the Jets in Week 2 of 2014.
“I told at least three people outside the building – talking to family, one of my cousins, talking to my wife, I told her -- ‘I feel like this could be my career high this game,’” Adams said. “So, either I’m clairvoyant or I know what I’m talking about.”
Clairvoyance might not be Adams’ only psychic ability.
Adams also claimed that during some of his catches he gets the feeling that he’s done the same thing before. Like on his 20-yard catch with seconds remaining in regulation to set up a potential game-winning field goal. It reminded him of what happened two weeks earlier in San Francisco, when Adams caught one over the middle to set up Mason Crosby’s 51-yard winning field goal. This time, Crosby missed from 51, but …
“I have this thing in games where I have déjà vu during the play,” Adams said. “It’s like a really weird thing.”
So weird that Adams once told fellow Packers receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling that he thought something was wrong with him.
“I’ll catch a ball and as I’m catching a football I’ll subconsciously have a quick flashback to something that’s happened before,” Adams said. “I don’t know. It’s like some weird ‘That’s So Raven’ s---. But when I get in those moments, it kind of helps me, because I know I’ve been there before so I turned up field, I started trying to take it all the way, I just didn’t know who was on that back side.”
But on Sunday’s déjà-vu play, Adams still had the presence of mind to snap out of it and realize if he didn’t get down, Rodgers might not have time to get everyone set for a clock-stopping spike.
“I decided to get down and give myself up,” Adams said. “But obviously we didn’t put that one through, but he came through at the end.”
It doesn’t happen without Adams, who was targeted 16 times (12 more than Rodgers’ next-highest-targeted receiver).
The reigning four-time Pro Bowler, Adams last season set the franchise record with 115 catches and tied the team mark for most receiving touchdowns (18) in a season. In the process, he became the first player in NFL history with 100-plus catches and 18 touchdowns.
Sunday was Adams’ second double-digit catch game and third triple-digit receiving yards game in the first five weeks of the season. Through Sunday’s games, Adams leads all NFL receivers in receptions (42), targets (61) and yards (579).
While Rodgers said Adams rarely does anything that surprises him anymore, they did connect on a deep ball for Adams’ season-long catch of 59 yards in the fourth quarter.
“Even when you know that I’m probably going to him, he still finds a way to get open and makes a big catch and breaks a tackle,” Rodgers said. “The guy is a special player. We had some coverages we hadn’t expected or run those plays against over the last couple of years. Hit that deep ball, hadn’t hit that type of reaction on that play since 2009 at Arizona.”
Adams wasn’t the only one who felt like he was headed for a big day.
“I could feel him early and I could tell,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said. “He’s a guy who’s hungry for the football and he shows good reason why. He’s got people draped all over him and it doesn’t matter. He finds a way to do it every time. There’s a reason he’s got that 99 rating in Madden. He is a baller. I don’t think there’s anybody better than him. We’re fortunate to have him.”
Adams said before the season that he deserves to be the NFL’s highest-paid receiver. Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst agreed, but they just can’t agree on what exactly defines the highest paid.
There’s also this: Does Adams want that to happen in Green Bay, where Rodgers’ future beyond this season is uncertain?
“It’s time to just ...” Adams said before stopping himself. “I’m just catching balls now and just having fun. I’m not really thinking about that. That’s typically how it goes, but that’s not really my main focus when I’m out there.”
He’s too busy predicting his big games and having déjà vu in the middle of them.