Davante Adams: There’s no place like … the L.A. Rams

LOS ANGELES — It was early in the morning in Japan when Davante Adams first heard from coach Sean McVay, but the Rams head coach’s message was clear.

We want you in Los Angeles.

McVay said — and showed — that to Adams as he recruited him over the phone, sending the receiver clips of his highlights and talking about how he would use Adams in his offense.

It didn’t take long for Adams to realize that playing for McVay in Los Angeles was where he “needed to be.” Adams signed a two-year, $44 million contract in March and currently has a $28 million cap number in 2026.

In Los Angeles, Adams found a place he believed he could win with a good quarterback and the ability to be “in a good enough spot with the coach where I felt like I can go and have success and build off what I’ve done already.”

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Adams was looking for that in part because he hadn’t had all three of those boxes checked for the past couple of seasons.

In March 2022, the veteran wide receiver asked to be traded from the Green Bay Packers, where he spent the first eight years of his career. He said he wanted a fresh start, and nearly three years later, he was searching for the place he wanted to be in the long term.

He thought that was the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022, with his former college quarterback Derek Carr and new head coach Josh McDaniels. When that didn’t go well, Adams asked for a trade during the 2024 season to the New York Jets to reunite with quarterback Aaron Rodgers, whom he played with in Green Bay.

During the Rams’ offseason program in June, Adams said in the short time since he’d been in Los Angeles, there wasn’t the same “dark cloud over the building” that he had experienced on previous teams.

“It’s a glaring difference when you come into a building like this,” Adams said.

Six months later, Adams, 33, and the Rams have won one playoff game and are playing in the divisional round against the Chicago Bears on Saturday. It marks the first time Adams has won a playoff game since he was with the Packers in the 2020 season, something he pointed out after the Rams’ wild-card victory.

And when Adams is asked whether he has found what he was looking for when he left Green Bay, he doesn’t hesitate to answer.

“Coming here, this has turned out to be exactly what I was looking for the whole time,” Adams told ESPN.

WHEN ADAMS WAS in town to sign his contract with the Rams in March, he and McVay had dinner at The Bird Streets Club in West Hollywood.

It was “just two football nerds talking X’s and O’s,” Adams said. The pair were talking about the art of creating separation at the line of scrimmage, when the receiver jumped up to demonstrate a release.

“We didn’t get too many looks,” McVay said. “I think people were like, ‘That’s some cool s— right there.'”

McVay had admired Adams’ film for years and said from what he had heard from Packers coach Matt LaFleur — a former Rams offensive coordinator and one of McVay’s “closest friends” — he thought Adams would be a “great fit.” But McVay said as he got to know Adams during the free agency process and he began to “hear the way that his brain works,” he realized how similar the pair are.

“I think we’re very similar personality-wise [and with our] competitiveness,” McVay said. “And we have a pretty special relationship that I cherish that’s only continued to grow.”

Adams said he quickly appreciated the culture McVay had built during his nine seasons in Los Angeles, one with a “college-type of camaraderie.” Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua remembers during training camp, Adams mentioned being surprised how “intermixed the units” were among the team. It was actually something Adams said he noticed pretty quickly.

“I don’t think I’ve seen a linebacker and a punter talking as much as I have since I’ve been here, or the kicker and quarterbacks, or whoever it is,” Adams said in June. “There’s just so much crossover. Even within myself, I found that it took a little more time for me to get integrated into the Jets team than it did getting here. I knew a lot more of the guys on this team even. So it kind of just depends, and a lot of that probably had to do with me going [to New York] halfway through the season.”

Rams second-year outside linebacker Jared Verse said Adams is a player he “loved” growing up, so when Verse realized the pair would be teammates, he said, “I thought I was going to be nervous to talk to him.”

Instead, Adams became “somebody I genuinely talk to anything about,” Verse said. “We have good conversations. If I have problems in life, I’ll come and talk to him.”

Rams backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who was Adams’ quarterback in Vegas in 2023, said Adams is “more open than he was at the Raiders.”

“Just in the lunch room, talking to people and things like that,” Garoppolo said. “But I think that starts with the leaders of this team. When you see that and everybody’s acting that way, you kind of just fall into place and you don’t really have a choice.”

Adams and Garoppolo played together for part of the 2023 season before the veteran quarterback was benched for rookie Aidan O’Connell. Later, in an interview for the Netflix series “Receiver,” Adams said he “signed off” on the benching. During training camp this year, Adams was asked about his relationship with Garoppolo in an interview with ESPN LA radio.

“I love Jimmy,” Adams said in July. “It was never a personal thing. … Obviously, that was just a dark moment in all of our lives. I think all of us were pretty miserable over there. And we kind of caught up and laughed about it and we’ve been making plays since we’ve been out here, so it’s been fun.”

IN WEEK 6 against the Baltimore Ravens, Adams and quarterback Matthew Stafford missed on several attempts in the red zone. Stafford said the early execution in that game was “just two throws really missed by me.” But the missed connections were not unlike what the pair had been working through during the early parts of the season as they learned each other’s body language and how to get on the same page.

Adams and Stafford did not get a full training camp of work, as Stafford missed the majority of the preseason while dealing with a back injury.

“I think it was more frustrating for me than what I showed,” Adams said. “But it was just because you got high expectations and like you said, him being who he is, me being who I am, you expect things to just work out.

“And I played with a guy, the same guy, for nine years. So having the ability to play with somebody that really knows you and to go somewhere with another great quarterback and it’s not working out, it could be frustrating. But it was something that I felt like it was necessary for us to grow. And I had to approach it as maturely as possible. And like I said, it wasn’t easy, but it’s easier when you’re working with somebody like him.”

Stafford called Adams “a great teammate,” saying he showed it early in the season “when maybe I wasn’t getting him the ball in some good spots and we struggled to hit on a few things.”

The week after that game against the Ravens, the team spent the week in Baltimore, practicing at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, so they could spend the week on the East Coast before flying to London to play the Jaguars.

It was during those practices in Baltimore, McVay said, that there “was a real breakthrough,” as the pair continued to accumulate practice reps.

“Time spent I think is a really important thing and it can be organic,” McVay said. “What I don’t think you want to do is press. Sometimes you can want something so bad that you can reach and press and then you’re getting away from the things that have allowed you to have successful outcomes at previous stops. They just kept going to work.”

In their next game, Adams had five catches for 35 yards and three touchdowns. Over a six-game stretch from Weeks 7-13, Adams had 11 receiving touchdowns.

“We showed flashes before, but just based off of what the ball was going and just the flow of some of the games, we couldn’t always get in the games and get some stuff going,” Adams said of their practice reps finally paying off. “So once we were able to kind of get some things more consistent and around [the London game] was the time when I felt like we really started picking up.”

Adams said his season in Los Angeles has been “exactly what I was hoping it’d be.” Unlike his previous two stops, the Rams had had recent success, including back-to-back playoff appearances.

“It’s always a little bit of a nervous feeling when you come into a new situation, when the team has had success and you’re hoping to come in and help and you’re like, all right, well hopefully it doesn’t come in and end up worse than what it was when I get there,” Adams said. “It’s one of those situations where I’m just happy to be a part of a team deal where I can come out and just be me.”

The results speak for themselves: 60 catches for 789 yards and a league-leading 14 touchdowns in 14 games. According to ESPN Research, Adams is the first player in NFL history to lead the league in that category with three different teams.

“I don’t have to be Hercules or anything, do anything outside of what I’m capable of doing,” Adams said.

IN WEEK 15 against the Detroit Lions, Adams was running a route down the sideline early in the fourth quarter when he fell to the ground and stayed down for some time. During the play, Adams aggravated his left hamstring, which first started bothering him in Week 4. He ended up missing the final three games of the regular season.

As the Rams prepared for the regular-season finale against the Arizona Cardinals, Adams made attempts to return. He participated in practice and was listed as limited on Wednesday and Thursday and as questionable for the game.

Later, McVay said the Rams were being careful with Adams’ recovery, erring on the side of caution as they prepared for the playoffs.

“I know it has pissed him off pretty good because of the competitor that he is, but he’s got that look in his eye that I know he’s ready to go [for the playoffs].”

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Adams said he was pushing to play, but also said he has learned to trust McVay and the Rams in those situations.

“It’s hard, but I think he’s so damn smart and he understands and he knows how much I love him,” McVay said.

Despite missing the final three games of the regular season, Adams finished with three more touchdowns than the next players on the list (Dallas Goedert, Tee Higgins, Trey McBride and Amon-Ra St. Brown). Adams is just the third player since 1940 to lead the league in receiving touchdowns despite missing three or more games, according to ESPN Research.

Nacua said having him back for the playoffs means “the defense is going to shift another way feeling the threat and the presence of Davante Adams.

“The threat that he provides in our offense and understanding that Matthew can look one way and always throw the ball the other way, that’s the threat every time.”

Adams had five catches for 72 yards on Saturday against the Carolina Panthers, combining with Nacua for 31 of Stafford’s 42 targets in the game.

Now, as Adams and the Rams are two wins away from his first trip to the Super Bowl, he said he knows he’s in the place he wants to be.

“Got the quarterback, great supporting cast and just a real locked-in team and a great city to play in,” Adams said. “So doesn’t really get much better than that.”