Green Bay Packers rookie wide receiver Davante Adams is trying to replace James Jones this season. Credit: Mark Hoffman

SHARE Video Loading...

By of the

Green Bay — Through the one-handed acrobatics and Houdini acts in traffic, Davante Adams needed a nickname.

"Megatron" and "Baby Megatron" were tossed around first. Then, "Optimus Prime."

As Fresno State's quarterback, the leader, Derek Carr decided "Optimus Prime" — a robot character from the "Transformers" movie franchise — needed to stick.

"He couldn't be Megatron," Carr said, "because that was taken by a special receiver. I won't say the name. I called him Optimus Prime because he reminds me a lot of that guy.

"He didn't get a tattoo or anything. But I tried to talk him into it."

Adams sidesteps any perceived parallels to Detroit's Calvin Johnson. Adams is the 6-foot-1 second-round pick. The rookie. Johnson is, you know, the 6-foot-5 Megatron. If a cartoon-themed nickname does stick in the pros, it'll be because of Adams' vise-strong yet baby-soft hands. No receiver in major college football caught more passes (131) than Adams last season.

These are 9-inch, basketball-weathered claws of death.

Throughout the NFL draft, the Green Bay Packers repeated that they were after natural pass catchers. The 53rd overall pick. Not scorching fast, not necessarily tall, those hands must remain automatic.

"It becomes natural," Adams said. "It's second nature. When you put a lot of work into it, it becomes easy.

"I put a lot into my craft. You have to make sure you're the best at whatever it is, and I pride myself on having good hands."

Tunnel vision

When September flipped to October last fall, Adams wasn't on a 131 track. Far from it.

After an uninspired 42-37 win over hapless Hawaii, Fresno State coach Tim DeRuyter called out the receiver. That game, Adams had five receptions, a bad drop and only 22 yards.

So DeRuyter told local reporters that Adams "has got to play harder," that "the issue was effort" and "I think (Adams) is embarrassed by it." He added that Adams played like he was ill even though he didn't think the receiver was.

When, in fact, Adams did have the flu. The wideout was hurting all week. During practice, Carr remembers the receiver looking like he was going to throw up at any moment.

He played. He played poorly. No hard feelings, Adams says.

"They coached me hard," Adams said, "and I wouldn't expect anything other than that."

Over his next two games — wins over Idaho and UNLV — Adams dominated with 24 receptions for 406 yards and seven touchdowns. The turnaround was a microcosm of Adams' approach to the game, to a ball zipping his way at 60 mph. He stays in tunnel vision.

Whether it's the flu or a pestering cornerback, he finds a level of Zen, of calm.

The result is total concentration.

"I just block everything out," Adams said. "It's not even something that I do. When the ball's in the air, everything goes quiet. That's how it is. I don't really think about it much. That's how I play Tunnel vision."

Asked to recall a drop by Adams in high school, Adams' old Palo Alto coach pauses for six, seven seconds. Palo Alto rolled to a 14-0 state championship season in Adams' senior year. Yet in that state title game, there was one questionable call along the sideline. Adams believed he caught it, cleanly, feet in bounds. The official claimed he bobbled it.

Incomplete.

This is the closest to an actual drop that Earl Hansen can remember.

"The ball never hit the ground, and he went out of bounds," Hansen said. "The call probably would have been reversed if we had instant replay.

"Why don't you ask him about that bobble. I guarantee you he'll remember."

He does. Adams still says it should have been a catch.

Of course, Palo Alto wouldn't have gone undefeated that 2010 season if, in a preceding playoff game, Adams didn't somehow snare a touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone with 21 seconds left, too. In a monsoon of a game — "it was pouring, pouring," Hansen said — Adams' strong grip kept a dream alive.

To Hansen, this was the rebounder in Adams. The coach always encouraged receivers to play hoops. Adams averaged 15 points, eight rebounds and seven assists as a junior and then 9.4, 5.8 and 5.4 as a senior. Along the way, he grew to naturally attack the ball at its highest point. To him, the rebounding directly translates.

It's no surprise Adams admired former NBA star Dennis Rodman. Any loose ball was Rodman's loose ball.

"When you go up for the rebound, you can't wait for the ball to come down," Adams said. "You have to go get the ball at the highest point. That's how it is in football. If you want to win those jump balls and those 50-50 balls, you've got to go up and get it."

As a result, Carr said Adams "very rarely" used his body to make a catch. The only times his top receiver did cradle the ball against his chest was when he sneaked a quick throw on him, surprised him. He can't think of a body catch at the top of his head.

Said Carr, "I'm scared to see what he can be in a couple years."

"So effortless"

The Optimus Prime-wide catching radius. The ability to reroute on the fly. The cosmic knowledge of the offense.

Carr describes Adams as a quarterback's best friend.

Green Bay is getting, he said, "one of, if not the best, receiver in the draft." Adams' hands, Rodman tenacity and 39½-inch vertical allowed the quarterback to gamble.

"I knew that if I was throwing it to Davante," Carr said, "I just had to put it somewhere in his vicinity and he was going to come down with it. It could be underthrown. It could be way too wide. Or it could be 13 feet in the air and he'll go up in the air and grab it. It won't be a problem for him."

For example, Carr continued, every fade he lofted Adams' direction. Like Green Bay's offense, a fade can snap into a back-shoulder bullet any moment.

That's why criticism of Fresno State's spread offense — often painted an easy-does-it slot machine — bothers Carr. He insists the Bulldogs had "pro concepts" built in. Routes demanded decision-making in real time. Fresno State simply operated much faster and against inferior competition.

In this case, back-shoulder chemistry with Aaron Rodgers shouldn't take two, three years. With Adams, Carr learned he could throw high and back-shoulder. With Adams, there's "a lot of room to miss."

The week after the Hawaii game, Carr called a "go" route for Adams. Get vertical. Both read that the cornerback was sitting atop the route — no audibles were called, no signals made — and Carr went back shoulder.

Adams dorsiflexed his body nearly 360 degrees like Jordy Nelson and plucked the one-handed touchdown pass above his head. As Carr punctuated, "I don't care who you're playing — there's not a lot of people who can do that."

He pauses.

"It's so effortless," he said, "it almost upset me even though we scored."

Jones out, Adams in

Now Carr is in Oakland with James Jones. And Adams is in Green Bay with Rodgers.

The question: Can Adams replace Jones?

Adams grasps the challenge. The two worked out together at Fresno State. Jones' close friend and former receivers coach Keith Williams was Adams' first position coach at Fresno State. Jones was a common sight. Carr does see similarities.

Like Jones, the veteran who gritted through a bad knee and cracked ribs last season, Adams prefers a physical game. His own training includes a heavy dose of boxing.

"I could still beat him up," Carr said. "But he has that boxing background. I see a lot of that physicality. Kind of the Bay Area in both of them. That's how they are."

In Green Bay, it always starts with the hands.

Through the 2010 Super Bowl run, Jones dropped a string of potential 50-, 60-yard touchdown catches. In 2012, he had three drops on 108 targets. Stickum-sure hands must be the basis of Adams' rise in Green Bay. That's what accelerates trust and timing with Rodgers.

Back at Fresno State, Adams would catch 50-100 balls at the JUGS machine after practice and then refine specific routes with Carr. They even perfected that one-handed, back-shoulder catch.

So, of course, the first ball thrown to Adams at Friday's rookie camp practice was a drop. The process begins. The "Optimus Prime" nickname is on hold for now. And, really, Adams says nobody calls him that anymore.

In Green Bay, he's got to re-prove himself.

"I think I fit right into what they have going on here," Adams said. "I can come in and contribute right away."