The 5 Toughest Corners I've Ever Faced 

by Davante Adams

It was Oct. 2, 2014, my fifth game as a Packer. We were playing the Vikings at Lambeau. Aaron called a play, and I knew — man, I just knew — that I wasn’t getting the ball. I was on the post route and Aaron didn’t like to throw the deep ball on that particular play. He always threw it to the intermediate route. A few coaches had even said to me that Aaron had thrown it to the post on that play only three times in his career.

So … you probably already know what happened.

After the snap, I was just running my guy off — just clearing him out of the way. Fifteen yards out or something, I looked up at the jumbotron — which I like to do to know where to block without having to turn my head around.

Aaron still had the ball. He was supposed to have thrown it already. But he still had it. He was tilting way back, about to throw it deep.

I was a mile from where I was supposed to be.

He tucked the ball — and he got like two yards on a scramble. Broken play. I knew I’d screwed up the second I saw him on the jumbotron. After the play, Aaron looked over at our offensive coordinator and pointed at me. He made a yanking motion with his arm — like, Take this dude off the field.

I spent the next eight plays on the sidelines.

If this entertaining, illuminating article is any indication, Davante Adams is either a highly intelligent, insightful, introspective, and self-aware student of the game, or he has the benefit of a good ghostwriter. Part of me suspects it's a combination of the two. In any case, it's well worth the read. His description of Sam Shields is pretty fun.

Originally Posted by: Nonstopdrivel 

This is interesting. So he writes his own articles? Is that a common practice these days?

Originally Posted by: DoddPower 

My guess is this mostly his work but had someone look it over and make a few suggestions.

Originally Posted by: wpr 

I tend to agree with you. This article is from The Players' Tribune , which was founded by Derek Jeter to give athletes a public forum in which to express themselves. The site brands itself "The Voice of the Game." What strikes me is that by and large, all of the articles on that site are excellent. They're so surprisingly well written, in fact, that I can't help but think they're heavily edited by site staff -- or perhaps the players' PR agents. The stark difference in quality of expression between the writing in these articles and the interviews these athletes tend to give stands out to me. The other factor that makes me think the articles are edited by staff is that many of them seem to have a very similar voice and style. For example, I read an article by Greg Jennings  in which he souned an awful lot like Davante Adams (and a whole lot better than he sounded as a color commentator the other day!), though he seems to favor one-line paragraphs more than Adams.

Maybe there's just a certain kind of voice that folks in the industry instinctively pick up? Then again, there are an awful lot of comm majors in the NFL. 😁

Originally Posted by: Nonstopdrivel 

Writing is not that complicated.

Originally Posted by: Zero2Cool