It Took Davante Adams All of 5 Days to Start Talking Like a NY Jet

How it began on October 15th:

How it's going, less than one calendar week later:

You've got to feel for Davante Adams. And have enormous respect for him. It takes some highly successful NFL veterans weeks to fully realize what they signed up for when they became a New York Jet. A fortnight perhaps. In some extreme cases, a month or more. But all it took for this savvy, three-time All Pro to crack the code was 60 minutes of regular season football. Specifically, the 30 minutes of the 2nd half against Pittsburgh in which he caught zero passes. Finishing the night with a paltry 3 catches on 9 targets for 30 yards in his celebrated reunion with his guy Aaron Rodgers. 

And it could very well be that connection Adams has with Rodgers that helped him figure this all out so quickly. Read these words and tell me that just 8 starts into his Jets career, he's not completely demoralized:

NewYorkJets.com - Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers did not mince words.

 

"That play, for whatever reason, just changed the entire energy, changed the game," he said.

 

Interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich echoed his veteran quarterback when he said: "Huge shift in momentum." …

 

 

"That play" turned the game on its head and turned a promising start into a 37-15 loss, the Jets' fourth straight. …

The sense that the Jets were on the verge of controlling the game evaporated after the interception and late Pittsburgh score. Rodgers said he sensed a loss of energy.

 

"I just felt like the energy, and it starts with me, the energy, for whatever reason, at halftime, was a little flat," he said. "I felt like it was flat before the game, too."

There is no substitute for starting at a new place of employment, a new school, or a new prison, and having a friend already there who can give you the lay of the land. From where the clean bathrooms are to which bullies to avoid to which gangs you can be affiliated with without getting beaten to death with a dumbbell in the yard. And it's clear that the few days Rodgers and Adams had to talk were invaluable when it came to bringing the newbie up to speed. 

The Jets are pro sports answer to the Pazuzu that Father Merrin finds in the desert at the beginning of The Exorcist. The Tiki idol The Brady Bunch found in that cave in Hawaii. The franchise curses all who come in contact with it. As I was about to say last week when life got in the way, anyone who thinks Bill Belichick would consider taking that job, wasn't watching Manningcast:

He'd sooner walk into Reactor 4 at Chernobyl without a hazmat suit than try to clean up that radioactive wasteland Woody Johnson rules over. 

Now, like his buddy Rodgers before him, poor, unsuspecting Adams has found out first hand how bad it is. And it's too late for either of them to do anything about it. At least their sentence is up at the end of the year. Jets fans are doomed to be Jets fans for eternity.

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