As the New York Jets were putting the finishing touches on another frustrating loss, Davante Adams was hopping on a redeye flight from Las Vegas to New Jersey, ahead of a trade from his old team to his new one. No rest for the weary — Adams met with interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich on Tuesday morning, took a physical and found time for a cameo on “The Pat McAfee Show” with Aaron Rodgers. Everybody is happy.
But happiness can be fleeting.
Acquiring Adams was a trade that was always going to happen. Adams and Rodgers have flirted with the idea of reuniting, publicly and privately, for the better part of a year. The Raiders went into the season without a quality quarterback on the roster. If Adams wasn’t available last year at the deadline when the Jets called (he wasn’t), or before this season when the Jets called again (he still wasn’t), he was going to break free eventually. If someone had suggested this summer that the Jets would be acquiring Adams in mid-October, it would have been built around the idea that the star receiver was the missing piece the team needed to get to a Super Bowl. That’s not quite what this is.
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News of the Adams trade came in at 10:05 a.m. on Tuesday. One week earlier, at 10:08 a.m., news broke that the Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh. Monday night, the Jets lost to the Buffalo Bills 23-20, their third straight loss — and one full of the same mistakes this team had been making with Saleh at the helm. The coaching change didn’t matter. They’re 2-4, the first time Rodgers, as a starter, has ever had a losing record through six games. This is uncharted territory. So the Jets called in reinforcements, his favorite wide receiver. Together, they have been one of the most prolific quarterback-wide receiver pairings in NFL history.
But Adams is not the missing piece for a Super Bowl run. The Jets are hoping he’s the missing piece that will get them out of the hole they’ve dug themselves into.
Mix in the Haason Reddick situation — the holdout defensive end was dropped by his agent last week, hired a new one on Monday, and granted permission to seek a trade on Tuesday — only added to the chaos of the last week. Or of the last year. Or of the last decade. The Jets breed chaos.
Woody Johnson, to his credit (or his detriment?) is pulling out all the stops to get the Jets back on the right track, at a time when they are a couple more losses away from the season flying completely off the rails.
But Johnson saw an opportunity to salvage the season, and he took it. “Salvagable?” he told reporters at the fall owners meetings in Atlanta. “We’re going to kick … you can fill the word in.” Johnson approved of general manager Joe Douglas’ pursuit of Adams, even though the Jets will have to pay the remainder of the receiver’s salary this season, a hefty $11.59 million. (The Jets restructured Adams’ deal to lower the cap hit in 2024, per reports, but he’ll still likely get paid that money via a signing bonus.)
“The status quo,” Johnson said, “is killer.”
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The Jets traded a conditional third-round pick to the Raiders that will turn into a second only if Adams — who has already missed three games with a hamstring injury — is an All-Pro, or if he is active for an AFC Championship game or the Super Bowl.
Adams is undoubtedly a stud. Some in the Jets building — even ones not named Aaron Rodgers or Nathaniel Hackett — believe that Adams’ ceiling, even at 31, is best wide receiver in the NFL. They already have Garrett Wilson, an ascending star, and Allen Lazard, Adams’ old Packers teammate who’s scored five touchdowns in six games.
At the end of Monday night’s loss, Rodgers threw an interception on a pass intended for wide receiver Mike Williams, a player the Jets gave a one-year deal worth “up to” $15 million with various incentives, hoping he’d provide a spark as the No. 2 wide receiver after so many receivers failed to support Wilson in 2022 and ’23. That hasn’t exactly panned out. Williams, coming off a torn ACL in 2023, has 10 catches for 145 yards through six games. And after the Bills loss Rodgers pointed a finger at Williams, pointing out the receiver had run the wrong route on the interception.
“When I’ve made mistakes, ‘I’ve got to play better, make that throw,’ that’s the standard for everyone,” Rodgers said on “The Pat McAfee Show” during his Tuesday appearance. “There were a lot of mistakes throughout the night, but if you’re looking at just that play, that’s what the questions were. ‘What happened on that play?’ Well, it was two verticals on the right side. Mike needed to get to the red line, which would’ve been a big gain, so I wasn’t calling Mike out for anything other than his responsibility in the details of that play. I have a lot of love and respect for Mike; he’s done some nice things for us, but in that play, he wasn’t in the right spot. You can make more of that if you want to, but we should all be held to a standard. I hold myself to a standard of greatness, and it hasn’t been there at certain times.”
Many expect Williams to be on the way out now that Adams has arrived — and it’s hard not to wonder whether Rodgers and Williams’ struggles to connect ultimately led to this deal for Adams. The idea is that Rodgers and Adams won’t have those same issues building chemistry.
That Adams — who has recorded five 1,000-yard seasons in six seasons, and 997 yards in the other — can help fix all that ails the Jets is a stretch. He can’t fix left tackle Tyron Smith (five sacks allowed this season) or the leaky run defense. But maybe he can help in the red zone, and he can help to open up some room for Wilson, who struggled to start the season going against No. 1 cornerbacks, to operate.
Ulbrich likened the potential of the Wilson-Adams pairing to what he saw as a linebacker for the 49ers when San Francisco brought in a young Terrell Owens to compliment an older Jerry Rice — and to learn from him.
“I think Davante’s going to provide that same thing for Garrett and for all of our receivers,” Ulbrich said. “He’s done this at an elite level for a long time, and on top of all of it, you’re going to see exactly the reflection of a relationship with Aaron, the synergy that they’ve had for so long. So, it’s an exciting time to be a jet.”
That excitement can die off quickly if the Jets lose to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night. If 2-4 is a difficult hill to climb, bouncing back from 2-5 to make the playoffs might feel like Mt. Everest. No team has made the playoffs with fewer than nine wins since the NFL added an additional wildcard spot in 2020; the Jets will need to win at least 7 of their final 11 games to get to 9-8. The aspirations were much higher when the season started.
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But the Jets have a 40-year-old quarterback on his last legs and an impatient owner. They also have a fan base tired of the close losses and of falling short year after year. The time to win is now, even if expectations have been recalibrated after a disappointing three-game losing streak that resulted in multiple casualties, from Saleh (fired) to Hackett (demoted).
The Adams trade was a win-now move for a team that is still figuring out how to win. Maybe the trade will provide the boost the Jets desire. Or maybe it’ll be a blip on the radar, a fleeting moment
“Thinking is overrated,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “You have to look forward. We have to look forward to the games we’re going to play each and every week and try to win all of them. And that’s basic stuff, right? … A lot of times you just have to go with your instinct and what’s the best thing to build a team and build a winning team and most importantly build a culture of winning? I think based on what I saw (Monday night) I think we’re starting in a new and exciting direction.”
(Top photo: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)