I don’t enjoy disparaging Green Bay Packers players. But with Davante Adams, still the No. 3 wide receiver on the official team depth chart, an analytical review of his pro career is in order.
The experts at numberFire, which refers to itself as “the world’s most accurate predictor of sports performance,” said this of Adams’ rookie season. “Adams was actually really inefficient [in 2014]. His Reception NEP per target average (an efficiency algorithm) was just 0.58, which ranked 62nd of the 90 wide receivers… with 30 or more receptions.”
Jordy Nelson’s Reception NEP per target was 0.93, and Randall Cobb’s was 0.94 – these were both top-10 averages league-wide.
Following the 2014 season, Pro Football Focus (PFF) compared the play of all 34 rookie receivers that year. Using its detailed grading system, Adams came out last among the 12 receivers who had over 500 snaps, and also last among the 25 rookies who got any snaps at wide receiver. It was the eighth worst rookie receiver grade recorded by PFF in the last eight years.
From the very first game of the 2015 season, against the Bears, Adams was unproductive. RotoUnderworld noted that Adams had a catch rate of 50.0% (4 of 8), while the other Green Bay receivers combined for a 93.3% rate from an otherwise red-hot Aaron Rodgers.
Here’s how numberFire put Adams’ 2015 season into perspective: “(A)mong the 721 instances of a receiver seeing at least 90 targets in a season since 2000, Adams’ Reception NEP ranked 719.”
On November 17, 2015, Football Outsiders did a lengthy analysis on why the Packers passing attack had gone south. Using an analytic that measures the efficiency or productivity when throwing to a particular receiver, they examined all Packers’ receivers with 40 or more targets per season from 2010 up to that point in 2015. Of the 23 rankings, Jordy Nelson utterly dominated the top of the list, with James Jones and Randall Cobb also having multiple highly-productive seasons. Faring less well were Greg Jennings and Donald Driver. Jarrett Boykin’s 2013 season was ninth from the bottom, and Richard Rodgers’ 2015 season (to that point) was seventh worst. The next to last ranking was Adams’ 2014 season, and in last place was his 2015 season (to that point).
Football Outsiders concluded: “Rodgers has had success with a range of receivers, but his lack of success with Adams has extended throughout the receiver’s two seasons.”
For 2015, Pro Football Focus, which reviews game tapes and issues a score for every play involving every NFL player, ranked Adams 181 out of 182 NFL wide receivers.
Some NFL players have low catch rates, others have low yards per reception, but few have both. Going back to 1992, however, numberFire reported in December 2015 that only 17 wide receivers have averaged 11 or fewer yards per reception and a 50% (or worse) catch rate (minimum of 60 targets) in a season. At that point, Davante Adams was on that list of 17 players – and his yards per reception was then fifth worst. He finished the season with a 53.7 catch rate, though his yardage per catch actually fell to 9.7.
Heading into the 2016 season, Pro Football Focus has Adams at No. 109 out of 121 ranked receivers.
In November 2015, Monty summed up the second-rounder from Fresno State: “He’s not fast, he can’t separate from coverage, he can’t win the jump ball and he doesn’t even appear to be a great route runner or pass catcher.”
Good enough for Mike McCarthy, who will likely make him a starter (as the No. 3 receiver) for a third year in a row.