Las Vegas Raiders star wide receiver Davante Adams put forth a dominant performance on Sunday night against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Adams finished with 13 catches for 172 yards and two touchdowns, but it came in a loss as the Raiders fell 23-18 in their home opener.
The Raiders now find themselves at 1-2, and while it is early in the season, the team finds itself on the brink of letting things get away from them already if they can’t turn it around. And that is precisely the concern of Adams, and he let it be known.
Adams recently spoke on the Raiders, saying that he doesn’t have time to wait around for the team to figure things out and establish a winning culture, via Christian Arnold of the New York Post:
“I don’t got time to wait around. … It’s not a personal thing,” Adams said after the loss. “I mean it is a personal thing, but it ain’t just about me. It’s not my mentality to sit here and try to take all season to figure it out. You use these early games like this to establish our identity. We’re not doing the things the right way to establish a winning culture early in the season, so we gotta do something to turn that around.”
Adams would continue on, noting that he feels the Raiders are talking and not doing as they did last year, something that was supposed to change this season:
“It’s not supposed to just be a week of talking about s–t,” Adams said. “We’ve got to go out there and do it. That’s the theme of this year is doing it. Not just talking about it and figuring out what we need to do. We did all that last year. This year we gotta be about it.”
After an All-Pro season last year in which he once again established himself as one of the premier receivers in the NFL, Adams wants more this season from a team perspective. The Raiders went 6-11 last season, so Adams’ individual success only means so much. Things were expected to be different this season, but so far, that hasn’t been the case.
Exactly what the source of these issues is and why the Raiders can’t quite get over the hump is unclear, but it needs to be figured out soon. The frustrations of Adams are clearly growing, and the team needs to turn the corner soon and turn their potential into actual production on the field.