It’s no secret that Davante Adams has not been happy with the direction the Las Vegas Raiders were heading.
Head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager David Ziegler were fired earlier this week and while Adams didn’t exactly cheer for the firing, he said it was a step in the right direction to bring the 3-5 Raiders out of whatever funk they’re going through.
Raiders’ WR: “It was time for some sort of change.”
Adams was one of the players who voiced frustrations during their team meeting on Monday prior to their game against Detroit, in which they lost that led to changes in leadership. Adams, per The Athletic said that it’s not a celebration, but a change was needed.
“At this point, don’t get it confused, it’s not a celebration that we have a new coach and changes were made,” Adams said. “Obviously, I think it was time one way or the other, it was time for some sort of change. Just to bring a little juice in and revitalize the team a little bit.”
Monday was a rough night for the Raiders; Quarterback Jimmy Garappolo had a tough outing, overthrowing Adams twice, and Adams also dropped a pass.
In eight games this season, he’s had 47 catches for 539 yards and three scores. Should he keep it up like this for the rest of he season? He would finish with his worst stat output since 2019 when he was limited to just 12 games with the Green Bay Packers.
Adams told reporters on Thursday that with the changes in leadership, the goal is to ease some tension, and he can sense that the vibe within the facility has already began to change. Vic Tafur of The Athletic even taking to Twitter to say, “Happiest locker room ever.”
Some Raiders players, Adams included were seen joking around and playing with Nerf hoops during the team’s open-locker period, which already is a good sign of the vibes changing for the better. Adams said that they need to move forward and be as positive as possible.
“I think it’s more of a mindset that we trying to not force – but just have moving forward to just be as positive as possible,” Adams said. “I think that’s the kind of mindset we have. Just try to have fun and enjoy our time on the field. I think, as we speak to each other, there’s been too much of this has just been feeling like work too much and not having enough fun. Just got to go back to that.”
The wide receiver wants the people to know that there are no hard feelings between him, McDaniels, and Ziegler.
“Before I say anything else, I just want to say I really appreciate Josh and Dave for bringing me here and going through what they went through in order to make this happen for me,” Adams told reporters. “I’m really appreciative of them because if they didn’t fight as hard as they did to make this happen ten who knows how it would have panned out.
“It didn’t end up like the story book finish that we all hoped that it would be, but at the end of the day you can’t live your life saying how ‘what if I wouldn’t get here, what if they’d never taken the job or make decisions’…I just want to put it out there that I appreciate them for this opportunity to get here.”
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