Packers WR Davante Adams honored with 2021 Stand-Up Guy Award

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GREEN BAY – Packers receiver Davante Adams was unanimously selected as the 2021 Tom Mulhern Stand-Up Guy Award recipient by the Green Bay chapter of the Professional Football Writers of America.

Adams is the first Packers player to be a unanimous choice and the first three-time recipient of the award. He’s also the first to be honored in back-to-back seasons for having best helped reporters covering the team to do their jobs effectively.

Adams, who first won the award in 2017, spoke with reporters every Wednesday during the season and following most games. When asked why he goes above and beyond when answering questions, Adams says it goes back to his upbringing.

“I don’t like going through the motions with anything that I do,” Adams said. “If you watch the clock at school, it’s going to be a long day. So, I try to get the most out of everything that I do.

“That was something I was taught by my parents, especially my dad. That’s something he was on me about was, ‘Don’t just go through the motions. If you have to clean something up, just commit to it, whatever you’re doing. If you’re at football practice, get the most out of everything you do.’”

Adams said the other part is the relationship he’s developed with the Green Bay media corps since he was drafted in the second round out of Fresno State in 2014. There were some tough times early on, especially a challenging 2015 campaign, but Adams always respected how the local media conducted itself.

The five-time Pro Bowl receiver said he plans to display the award next to his previous two Stand-Up Guy trophies at his home back in California.

“This group here, guys who are around day-to-day, y’all have made me feel good about coming in here and doing this with you and asking good questions,” Adams said.

“Even when you have to ask some of the tougher questions that you gotta ask, I feel like you all treat me like a human being. It feels good to feel that and it makes it a lot more fun to come in here and chat with you all and give you the real me. I just try to be me. I like to think that’s what it is. I come in here and really just have a conversation with y’all.”

The Stand-Up Guy Award is named after the late Tom Mulhern, a former Packers and Wisconsin Badgers beat writer for the Wisconsin State Journal and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel who passed away at age 56 in October 2014.

Tom Mulhern Stand-Up Guy recipients

2014: Jordy Nelson, Tramon Williams

2015: No award given

2016: Micah Hyde, T.J. Lang

2017: Davante Adams, David Bakhtiari

2018: Kenny Clark

2019: Bryan Bulaga, Mason Crosby, Tramon Williams

2020: Davante Adams, Aaron Rodgers

How Davante Adams went from Palo Alto prospect to 49ers’ top tormentor

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The man who helped create a pass-catching monster, Green Bay’s Davante Adams, is a former 49ers quarterback who lives in the Bay Area and serves as a franchise goodwill ambassador.

Steve Bono, 59, bleeds red and gold — and he also has a notable connection with Adams, the first-team All-Pro who doomed Bono’s former team in September. A player who will look to do so again Saturday night on a bigger stage: the 49ers’ visit to Lambeau Field in a divisional playoff showdown.

Bono laughed this week when asked about his role in Adams’ early development more than a decade ago at Palo Alto High and its potential unintended consequence: Should he be held partly responsible if the 49ers don’t reach the NFC Championship Game?

“I’d like to think I have a little piece,” said Bono, a Palo Alto Vikings offensive assistant from 2001-2015. “It’s not just me. It’s the Palo Alto community. Palo Alto High School. The coaches he played for. The kids that he played with. It takes a village.”

It will take a host of players to try to contain Adams, 29, on Saturday. He leads the NFL in catches (432), receiving yards (5,310) and receiving touchdowns (47) since 2018. And the Bay Area native specializes in tormenting the 49ers. His average stat line in five career meetings: 9.6 catches, 123.6 yards and one touchdown.

In his last game against the 49ers, Green Bay’s 30-28 walk-off win in Week 3 at Levi’s Stadium, he had grabs of 25 and 17 yards in the final 37 seconds to set up the winning field goal. It capped a 12-catch, 132-yard game that was preceded by Adams’ warm pregame meeting with Bono, a key figure during the two seasons Adams played football at Palo Alto.

After they shared a hug, Adams smiled and looked at Bono, an alumni coordinator for his former team, dressed in 49ers gear.

“I know who you are rooting for today,” Adams said.

Their relationship began in 2009 when Adams, a standout basketball player, joined the football team as a junior. He had played Pop Warner football, but his relative inexperience meant he was gifted, raw and not the best receiver on the team. That distinction belonged to Joc Pederson, destined to become an MLB outfielder, but back then a senior at Palo Alto.

Adams, now 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds, could catch, jump and run. And Bono was a coach who was uniquely suited to add polish by teaching him the finer points of the position. Vikings head coach Earl Hansen ran the West Coast offense, which he had learned from Bill Walsh, and Bono had earned a graduate degree in the system as well after spending five seasons (1989-1993) with the 49ers during his 15-year career as an NFL backup.

“We taught Davante to run routes, but not just run routes,” Bono said. “But how to run routes by steps so they corresponded with the steps of the quarterback. And then he knew how to get the ball. Athletically and size-wise, he was superior to anyone that he was playing in high school.”

49ers at Packers Injury notes: 49ers - CB Ambry Thomas (knee) and DE Jordan Willis (ankle) are questionable. Packers - WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling (back) is doubtful; CB Jaire Alexander (shoulder) and T David Bakhtiari (knee) are questionable. Three things to watch The Packers, who tied for 15th in the NFL with 39 sacks, activated pass rushers Za’Darius Smith (back) and Whitney Mercilus (biceps) from injured reserve Friday. Smith has been out since Week 1. Mercilus was hurt in Week 8. Rodgers threw 20 touchdown passes and no interceptions, completed 72% of his passes and posted a 124.5 passer rating in his final six regular-season games. The Packers allowed 4.7 yards per rushing attempt, third highest in the NFL. - Eric Branch See More Collapse

Adams, as a senior, caught 63 passes and helped lead the Vikings to a state title while catching passes from Bono’s son, Christoph, who went on to play baseball at UCLA.

Christoph Bono, Raiders Pro Bowl quarterback Derek Carr (whom Adams played with at Fresno State) and Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers have been Adams’ only primary QBs since high school.

He developed a strong chemistry with Christoph in their second season together. Now, in his eighth season with Rodgers, Adams has developed a seemingly telepathic communication with the three-time NFL MVP.

This season, Adams was voted a unanimous first-team All-Pro and set single-season franchise records with 123 catches and 1,553 receiving yards. He also became the sixth player in NFL history to have 600 catches, 8,000 receiving yards and 70 TD catches in his first eight seasons.

Rodgers, 38, recently termed Adams the “most dominant” teammate he has had in his 17-season career.

This week, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, citing Adams’ elite qualities, mentioned his balance, footwork, explosiveness, hands and toughness.

“Then (you pair) him with a quarterback who doesn’t need much separation, who gets you the ball wherever he wants it,” Shanahan said. “That’s a very lethal combination.”

Before the Packers’ regular-season win, when Adams noted Bono wouldn’t be rooting for the Packers, his former coach responded that he would be rooting for Adams that night.

However, Bono admits that he had a feeling at the end of that game that could resurface Saturday night.

“I really was rooting for Davante to do well,” Bono said. “But I wasn’t rooting for him catch those balls on us at the end of the game.”

Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Eric_Branch

Las Vegas Raiders need to make Davante Adams priority No. 1

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The Las Vegas Raiders need to upgrade the wide receiver position, and Davante Adams has to be priority No. 1 this offseason.

After releasing Henry Ruggs III for his involvement in a DUI car crash, the Las Vegas Raiders struggled to fill the void he left behind. Hunter Renfrow and Zay Jones certainly stepped up more than expected, but it was evident that Las Vegas was without a true number one receiver.

Las Vegas will have to find one in the offseason, and there is one potential candidate that makes the most sense.

That candidate would be Davante Adams, Derek Carr’s former college teammate and current top receiver for the Green Bay Packers. Adams’ contract expires at the end of the 2022 season, and it’s unknown whether he’ll sign a new contract with Green Bay or get franchise tagged.

If he is available, then Mark Davis must do everything in his power to bring Adams to Vegas, and here is why.

The Packers Need A Receiver Who Can Do It All. Good Thing They Have Davante Adams.

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Facing a third-and-goal in the second quarter of a Christmas Day game against the Cleveland Browns, the Green Bay Packers sent wideout Davante Adams into the slot. Cleveland brought a blitz, leaving him one-on-one with safety Richard LeCounte, and Adams did a samba on top of the hashmarks while Aaron Rodgers backpedaled and lofted a ball to the middle of the end zone. The dance got Adams the separation he needed; an instant later, he brought in the 9-yard touchdown pass. It was one of two scores on the day for Adams as he helped Green Bay to a 24-22 win, the fourth in a five-game late-season streak that clinched the NFC’s top seed.

Afterward, Rodgers divulged that Adams had drawn up his own route in real time, via a kind of football ESP. “He didn’t do what, basically, is on the paper football offense,” Rodgers said. “He did exactly what I would have wanted to tell him.”

Coming off off a first-round bye, the Packers open their playoff run against the San Francisco 49ers as the league’s most bankable contender. They feature the likely back-to-back MVP and own the second-highest offensive Defense-adjusted Value Over Average in the NFL, and their injury-hobbled defense brings back Pro Bowlers Za’Darius Smith at outside linebacker and Jaire Alexander at cornerback. FiveThirtyEight gives them a league-best 25 percent chance of winning the Super Bowl. But their most notable deficiency — a receiving corps that thins out quickly — doubles as an endorsement of the player who papers over it, and who may be the most important non-quarterback in football. Other high-scoring title hopefuls employ slot guys, downfield burners and jump-ball daredevils. In Adams, Green Bay has all three, and whatever else they need him to be.

The question of who is the best receiver in the NFL usually hinges on preference. You could side with yardage over scores (Julio Jones in 2015), airborne artistry over top-end speed (DeAndre Hopkins in 2017) or game-breaking quickness over a classic frame (Tyreek Hill in 2018). The past couple of years, Adams has simplified things, settling into the highest echelon of just about every category of catching there is. Over the 2020 and 2021 regular seasons, he put up 2,927 yards, second only to Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson leaguewide, and tallied 29 touchdowns, the most in the NFL. Adams looks the part of a slot receiver — all quick slips and soft hands — but he’s parlayed the skill set into mastery of all trades. This season, he ranks in the top 10 in total yardage in short, intermediate and deep routes alike. Against man defenses, Pro Football Focus grades him as the fourth-best target in football; against zone, the best. Cooper Kupp is the only other pass-catcher in the league to match Adams’s region-by-region output, but though the Rams All-Pro has him outpaced in yardage and scores, PFF gives Adams the edge in all-around value.

At 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds, Adams is physically ordinary, at least on the scale of all-world receivers; coming out of Fresno State in 2014, he ran an unremarkable 4.56 40-yard dash. He has since progressed from Discount Jordy Nelson to Destroyer of Defenses by honing whatever edge he could find to as sharp a point as he could muster. Scouring tape of Keenan Allen and onetime Russell Wilson favorite Doug Baldwin, Adams has pilfered and then improved upon (by way of his trademark hop) the finest line-of-scrimmage releases in the world. His work at the top of routes brought Chad Ochocinco to tears. Fans go gaga over the contested catches — the “late hands” that keep a defender from getting an ETA on an incoming throw, the toes anchored to the last sliver of pre-sideline grass — but Adams prefers to get the job done early. “If you can put yourself in a position where it’s essentially a route on air, that’s the Jerry Rices and these guys of the world,” he said in a 2020 interview with NFL Network’s Brian Baldinger. “You watch all the film, you never see anybody hanging all over them.”

Versatility is supposed to come at the expense of expertise, or vice versa, but Adams’s reel insists otherwise. It’s hard to pick out a signature. The prettiest plays are the back-shoulder sideline shots, where Rodgers aims the throw behind Adams and he pulls an invisible parachute, whipping around to grab it while his defender tumbles off into oblivion. The steadiest are the quick screens: a full-body flick and a 7-yard gain, seemingly whenever he and Rodgers want it. The hardest to televise (and to cover) are those downfield routes when Adams has time to work the long con, tracing one line and then, snap, inside-outing into open field. (“Head and eyes, really dig” is how the receiver describes the sell.) By the time the camera finds him settling under a Rodgers looper, his defenders are massaging the kinks out of their necks.

Adams’s play would be impressive in any context, but it’s all the more so given how desperately Green Bay needs it. Adams averages 97.1 receiving yards per game; no other Packer manages even 40. Tom Brady throws his deep shots to Mike Evans and his seam routes to Rob Gronkowski, Patrick Mahomes can toggle between the blurry Hill and the burly Travis Kelce, and even the Kupp-heavy Rams have seen Odell Beckham Jr. score six touchdowns since his November arrival. For Rodgers, Adams is the go-to field-stretcher (76 catches of 20-plus yards on the season, the third-most in the league) and red-zone stalwart (seven touchdown receptions inside the 10, tied for third-most); when the screen game is working, he’s functionally the team’s biggest rushing threat too. It’s no surprise that, when Adams missed a late-October game against the Cardinals due to COVID-19 protocols, Rodgers posted his third-lowest passer rating on the year. “Nobody I’ve seen has that ability to continually reinvent himself even inside of a game, and set routes up the way he does,” Rodgers said.

That’s the story of the Packers’ offense: Everyone knows where they want the football to end up, but nobody knows how it’s going to get there. Back in Week 3, Green Bay trailed the 49ers by a point, with 75 yards of field to cover in 37 seconds. Adams might as well have been wearing a neon helmet. Still, on the first play of the drive, he head-and-eyes-ed his way to a dead spot in San Francisco’s deep zone, and Rodgers found him for 25 yards. A spike and an incompletion later, Rodgers again hit Adams on an in-breaker. The two had covered 45 yards in 21 seconds; Mason Crosby kicked a game-winner as time ran out.

It’s not an ideal distribution of labor. The Packers, like every club, would prefer a smidge more flexibility to their attack, a tandem or trio to fill out pregame graphics and force safeties into decisions. “I’m not getting singled up … especially in gotta-have-it moments,” Adams said. But you get the sense that he’s not complaining: the tougher the challenge, the better the one-man show.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

CORRECTION (Jan. 20, 2022, 3:30 p.m.): An earlier version of this article misidentified a player to whom Davante Adams was compared. It was Jordy Nelson, not Jordy Evans.

Davante Adams DFS Value, Prop Bets vs. 49ers: Can anyone on the 49ers contain Adams?

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The Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs is upon us, which means only a few games remain in the season — leaving us limited time to find value in fantasy football and NFL betting. As we continue our tour around the Divisional Round while examining individual player values for prop bets and DFS, let’s see if there is value in Davante Adams.

Davante Adams’ DFS value vs. 49ers

When you start the conversation about the best wide receivers, not only in fantasy football/DFS but the NFL, the conversation begins with Adams. Even with multiple seasons of 1,300+ yards, he found a way to best those numbers in 2021.

Playing in 16 games, Adams set career-highs in receptions (123) and passing yards (1,553), finishing third in the NFL only behind Cooper Kupp (1,947) and Justin Jefferson (1,616). Adams also tied a career-high with 169 targets (second-most in 2021) while scoring 11 touchdowns. That would be a career season for 99% of players but was a 39% decrease from 2020 (18). That’s how good Adams is.

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From a consistency standpoint, few are better than Adams, who averaged 21.5 points and finished as a WR2 or better in 11 of 16 games. At $8,500, Adams is just $100 less than Kupp as the second-highest-priced WR — they are the only players above $8,000 for this weekend’s slate. Even Josh Allen is set at “just” $7,600. After setting the franchise single-season record for receptions, there seems to be no slowing down Adams. And I don’t think the San Francisco 49ers will be able to do it either.

While the 49ers are No. 7 in DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) as a unit, they are 16th in pass DVOA and 23rd in EPA/dropback (Expected Points Added). For fantasy, they are No. 23 in points allowed to WRs per game at 35.55 PPR and have allowed 24 WRs to score double-digit points. Since Week 12, seven different WRs have scored 19 or more. If you were ever going to pay up for a WR this week in DFS, it has to be Adams, even at $8,500.

Davante Adams prop bets this weekend

It should be no surprise that Adams’ receiving prop is one of the highest of the week on basically every sportsbook. On FanDuel, it is at 91.5 yards (-110). Over on DraftKings, it’s 94.5 (-115) and 95.5 (-125) on PointsBet. No question, it is a lot of yards. Yet, for a receiver who has eight games of 100+ yards — including 206 in Week 5– you can never count Adams out.

Adams is the Packers’ passing offense. He represents 31.6% of the targets and 37% of the team’s air yards. At 1,609 intended air yards, Adams is ninth in the NFL. If you expect Aaron Rodgers to have a good game, which I do, then Adams will as well.

Whether it is Ambry Thomas or Emmanuel Moseley guarding Adams, no one on this defense is capable of stopping him. Certainly not two CBs who allow 80% and 70% reception percentage when targeted, respectively. If you want the action, it has to be the over when looking at prop bets for Adams.

Adams’ anytime touchdown will be a popular bet as well, but there is not a ton of value. Currently, it is -136 on PointsBet, -135 on DK, and -145 on FanDuel. Personally, I prefer the +125 of AJ Dillon on PointsBet if I were to pick a Packers anytime scorer, but you cannot go broke making a profit. Even at -135, Adams is highly likely to find the end zone and does bring some value.