Guarding Davante: From other side of line, Bulldogs’ Adams was a machine, and a marvel

The last time Derron Smith saw Davante Adams on a football field was 2017, in Cleveland. That, in case the memory fails, was not a good season for the Browns. They went 0-16. But there they were in Week 14, the former Fresno State teammates, Smith with the Browns and Adams with Green Bay. Stunningly, Cleveland had a two-touchdown lead going into the fourth quarter, then a one-touchdown lead with less than three minutes to play and then with 17 seconds remaining, poof, that lead was gone.

Adams caught a short touchdown pass to tie the score and send the game into overtime.

Soon enough, the game was over when the former Fresno State wideout turned a short screen pass into a 25-yard touchdown and kept on running right up the tunnel at FirstEnergy Stadium without so much as a wave goodbye to the fans he had stunned to silence.

Smith remembers thinking at the time, “It sucks being on the losing end, but, man, that’s dope ...”

Adams on Saturday night at halftime of the Bulldogs’ Homecoming game against San Jose State will become only the ninth player in school history to have his jersey number retired, and that is as well.

The former Bulldogs wideout will have his name and the No. 15 unveiled on the press box facade at Valley Children’s Stadium alongside the No. 8 for David Carr, No. 9 for Kevin Sweeney, No. 12 for Trent Dilfer, No. 14 Vince Petrucci, No. 21 for Dale Messer, No. 22 for Lorenzo Neal, No. 83 for Henry Ellard and right next to his quarterback, then and now with the Las Vegas Raiders, the No. 4 for Derek Carr.

“Right next to his boy, right next to Derek,” said former Bulldogs cornerback Isaiah Green. “That’s going to be fun …”

ADAMS WILL BE NINTH BULLDOG TO HAVE JERSEY RETIRED

“It’s awesome,” said Nick Toth, the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator when Adams, Carr and a fabulously talented offense were lighting up the Mountain West Conference in 2012 and ‘13.

“Something special,” said Jonathan Norton, who made one of the biggest plays of the season in 2013, breaking up a fourth-down pass late in the fourth quarter to clinch a victory over Boise State.

Smith, Green, Toth, Norton, L.J. Jones, Sean Alston, coach Tim DeRuyter, Jamal Ellis, Shannon Edwards, anyone who lined up against Adams in practice in his three years at Fresno State or coached on that side of the football all have a unique perspective on a player who breezed through the school’s record book.

They were there everyday, working on their craft as Adams was working on his, on his way to becoming one of if not the best wideout in the NFL. For some, one play stands out. For others, there are too many.

“There would be multiple times within a practice where we might rewind the film a couple of extra times just to watch his route, not even to critique our DB skills, but just watching the route that he ran,” Smith said.

“Those practices were something to remember,” Norton said. “There was a lot of teaching tape the next day in film.”

For Green, there is one play and one story from his senior season in 2011, when Adams was just a freshman on the scout team while sitting out as a redshirt.

“I remember what I was thinking. I remember my game plan and I was thoroughly shocked, honestly,” Green said. “But it was one of those moments where you knew this guy was going to be special …

ISAIAH GREEN: ‘HE WAS JUST GONE ...’

“We were lined up one-on-one. I remember I was in press technique and I was looking forward to putting my hands on him, just putting them right in his chest, and when the ball was snapped I remember him going one away and I went the other way and I looked up and he was just gone.

“The move off the line was just … I was like, Wow. As a freshman, he wasn’t as big as he is now. He definitely wasn’t as strong as he is now and I don’t think he had all that hair on his head, either. But his ability to get off the line, his releases, were crucial, even as a freshman. That is the vivid moment that I remember — ‘Oh, this is Davante Adams.”

Ellis was just beginning his career when he first matched up against Adams. Different perspective, but he saw the same thing.

“As a freshman, you’re trying to show what you can do, but every day you’re going up against this guy, who is an elite receiver,” said Ellis, who was a redshirt in 2012 and in the starting lineup at cornerback midway through 2013. “This man’s footwork and his releases, his body control to catch the ball is just different. We could be in the best position possible in terms of coverage, but he’s just such an elite receiver, even at that time, that there was nothing that you could do but continue to work on your craft.”

Matched up one-on-one in the red zone one day, he thought he had a fix on Adams. He had worked against him for weeks, studied the tape. He’d get a fake outside and cut inside on a slant, so the plan was to sit inside.

“He did his quick release, faked outside, jab-stepped inside and I was sitting there waiting for the slant and he just stutter stepped and went outside and I totally guessed wrong,” Ellis said.

“I remember thinking, ‘OK, no matter how much film or how much I think I know, you never know what he’s going to do.’ He talked about that in an interview this year or last year about how a DB might try to guess at what he’s going to do, but he doesn’t really have a plan until he gets up there and that was a prime example. He’s able to think so quickly on the fly based off whatever the DB or the defense might give him.”

Toth, who now coaches the safeties at Air Force, is friends with Packers coach Matt LeFleur. They worked together at Ashland University in 2007, Toth as the defensive coordinator and LeFleur as the offensive coordinator

“We would talk all the time about Davante,” he said. “He’d say, ‘Man, no wonder you guys were so good at Fresno.’ I was like, ‘Yeah we had a Freak Show out there that stressed you out every day. It couldn’t be any worse on Saturday than it was on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.’”

Most of those game days, it wasn’t close. Carr, working with Adams and wideouts Isaiah Burse and Josh Harper, lit up the Mountain West, leading the conference in passing offense and scoring in 2012 and ‘13.

In 2013, they became only the fifth set of wideouts in NCAA history to each rack up 1,000 or more receiving yards, Adams with 1,718, Burse with 1,026 and Harper with 1,011.

“They were a three-headed monster and all of them were unique in their own right,” Green said. “Isaiah, he could juke you in a phone booth. Harp, he was the possession guy, guaranteed to catch the rock.

“But if you wanted to create some excitement, if you wanted to go big, if you wanted throw the ball 60 yards down the field, then you go to Tae.”

The Bulldogs also won 20 games and conference championships in those two seasons.

“We knew we had a crew that was pretty special, but there was one guy in particular that really stood out,” said DeRuyter, who was hired in 2012 and is now the defensive coordinator at Texas Tech. “I first noticed him, it was one of our first recruiting weekends in January. We had a number of recruits in and Davante was hosting. There’s a crowd of guys around his phone and he had his highlight tape from basketball when he was in high school and he was dunking every which way you can and just dominating guys.

“When we looked at the pieces that we inherited, we knew we had some guys, but that he was a little different from the rest of them. We’d put trips into the boundary and Davante into the field and I, still in defensive coordinator mode, thought, ‘Ooh, that’s a tough choice for defensive coordinators to make.’ They’d have him singled with all that space, Derek got him the ball and he would take a hitch and take it for 50 in a hurry.”

Adams in 2012 caught 102 passes for 1,312 yards with 14 touchdowns, averaging 12.9 yards per catch. The following season he caught 131 passes for those 1,718 yards with 24 touchdowns, averaging 13.1 yards per catch.

ADAMS’ RECORD-SETTING SEASONS

His 233 career receptions were a school record, since broken by KeeSean Johnson with 275. The 131 receptions in 2013 are a school and Mountain West record. His 38 career touchdowns is a school record that may never fall — before Adams, the record was 25 set by Ellard and later tied by Charlie Jones and Bernard Berrian.

Adams had 10 games with two or more touchdown receptions with a high of four in 2013 in a victory over UNLV and then again later that season in a victory over New Mexico.

“Davante is just special,” Green said.

Smith and the Bulldogs saw plays like that game-winner in Cleveland just about every day. When they didn’t, it was because there was no practice or no game, no spring or summer workout. The former Fresno State safety, who played for the Cincinnati Bengals and the Browns in his NFL career, had warned his teammates beforehand.

His advice in covering Adams was, pretty much, good luck.

“I used to tell them, if you’ve ever guarded somebody in basketball, that’s what it’s going to be like guarding Tae at the line,” Smith said. “He just has moves that are very similar to a cross-over, like a basketball player. It’s a lot more than that, but that’s the one thing I would try to tell them.

“But he has such an arsenal off the line it’s damn near impossible to tell a teammate, ‘Hey, he’s going to do this, he’s going to try to use that, he’s going to try this leverage against you.’ You can do all that right and Tae will have a backup plan to his backup plan and still get off the line.”

It’s a challenge that all of his Fresno State teammates, the cornerbacks and safeties who competed against Adams on the practice field, willingly signed up for. Whether they won, or lost, it made them all better.

“I definitely still remember the practices were a lot of times harder than the games in terms of straight athleticism at the receiver position and skill at the quarterback position when you have Derek at quarterback and obviously Davante out wide and you also have Josh Harper and Isaiah Burse,” Smith said. “It definitely was a stacked offense that we got to practice against every single day, which obviously in turn made us better.”

“I remember just the pride that he had in his performance,” Toth said. “It literally drove the entire team. It was not just him. We had a lot of guys. But his relentlessness, his ability to go every day and do it at a high level, it drove that mantra. That’s what Fresno State is. We’re going to outwork you. We’re going to grind. We’re going to be tough. That’s what Davante was, every day. He was the epitome of Bulldog Born and Bulldog Bred back then. There was a lot of them like that. It went all the way through our team — Philip Thomas, Derron, LJ. That’s why we were good.

“But Davante is a fierce competitor. Occasionally, when you did cover him, he wanted to go right back up again. He did not want to lose. He was fierce. His work ethic was relentless. It was awesome to watch.”