It’s well-known just how great Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams is. He’s on a Hall of Fame trajectory, is the best route runner in football and remains in the discussion as the best receiver in football.
Yet, on Sunday night inside Allegiant Stadium against the Raiders on Sunday Night Football the Pittsburgh Steelers seemed content with letting Adams eat.
And eat he did. Adams saw a whopping 20 targets from quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and finished with 13 catches for 172 yards and two touchdowns, beating Steelers cornerback Levi Wallace on both of hos scores. Pittsburgh seemingly didn’t change a thing against Adams throughout the game, which generated a number of questions coming out of the matchup.
One such question arose from Pro Football Focus’ Sam Monson on the PFF NFL Podcast recapping the Week Three matchups across the league. Monson questioned why the Steelers didn’t do more to try and take away Adams, who was very clearly the only real option in the passing game for Las Vegas.
“Why did Pittsburgh not do more to try and take away Davante Adams, given he was basically all they had? Guy had 20 targets! For quite an extensive period of the game, it was pretty clear that was the only place they were going to go with the ball. You wouldn’t double cover, bracket, take that away more, make them go somewhere else?” Monson said of the Steelers’ strategy.
The last time the two teams met in Week 16 of the 2022 season, Adams was limited to just two catches for 15 yards. Granted, conditions were rather poor in that Christmas Eve matchup with temperatures hovering around freezing, making it harder to throw the football. Inside the dome at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday night, conditions were perfect.
Despite Adams carving up the Steelers secondary throughout the game, Pittsburgh never changed.
It was incredibly puzzling, especially as the Raiders mounted a late comeback. There was no answer for Adams and no effort to bracket him and take him away. Usually, Pittsburgh does a good job defensively of taking away a strength and forcing the opposing offense to win another way.
That didn’t happen on Sunday night, and it was rather baffling.
According to Next Gen Stats, Adams averaged 11.5 yards on average per target, was given 4.7 yards of cushion on average, and created three yards of separation on average throughout the game. Adams also had the fourth-highest percentage of air yards on the week at 52.68% of Las Vegas’ air yards against the Steelers.
He was the focal point of Las Vegas’ attack, and it was rather maddening that Pittsburgh never even attempted to adjust, being content to let Adams chew up off-man coverage against Wallace and Patrick Peterson, which helped the Raiders get back into the game. After having plans to take away Deebo Samuel and Amari Cooper in successive weeks, the Steelers seemingly never even attempted to do so against Adams, who is the superior receiver compared to the other two.
It made no sense. Hopefully head coach Mike Tomlin provides a bit of an explanation on Tuesday.
