Davante Adams’ view of Raiders QB Derek Carr, Aaron Rodgers goes viral

When the Raiders acquired All-Pro wide receiver Davante Adams via trade in March, the transaction caught many by surprise and caused quite a stir leaguewide.

Recently, a quote from Adams raised eyebrows in much the same way. It all started when Adams was asked to compare Las Vegas quarterback Derek Carr to his previous signal-caller, future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers. Though Adams gave a lengthy, insightful answer, a small, juicy portion of his comment made the rounds on social media.

Here’s the tweet from ESPN that took a tiny fraction of Adams’ quote and ran with it. Reporters noted that the quote was taken out of context, perhaps because it seemed that Adams compared Carr to Rodgers too favorably. Rodgers won the NFL MVP award in each of the last two seasons and has four MVP trophies overall.

Yeah, publishing that quote by itself is guaranteed to get a lot of likes on Twitter, that’s for sure. But how well does it represent what Adams actually said?

While I agree that the quote is more accurate and interesting with more context, I believe that this fraction of Adams’ comment represents his answer quite well. I might be in the minority in that regard, so I’ll explain shortly. But first, here’s more of the comment, courtesy of The Athletic’s Tashan Reed, who tweeted the quote in full.

“That’s a tough question. I mean, it’s tough to compare. It’s really apples and oranges there,” Adams said, per Reed and his colleague, Vic Tafur. “You have Aaron, who’s cemented as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. That’s just like comparing me to Jerry Rice. It’d be tough to do because Jerry’s put together what he’s done and it’s undeniable respect for him. And me, I’m still going and there’s still a lot that I got to do to be able to be mentioned with Jerry, I’m aware of that. And I think Derek is also aware of that from a big picture.

“But as far as talent and ability, I mean, it’s really similar if I’m…