Derek Carr

Green Bay Packers star Aaron Rodgers was apparently paying attention when Davante Adams said he was going from one Hall of Fame quarterback to another Hall of Famer.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, the reigning back-to-back NFL MVP was asked about getting Allen Lazard back after the wide receiver skipped offseason activities in an attempt to get a new contract.

"I mean, it's always tough going from Hall of Famer to Hall of Famer," Rodgers cheekily replied.

In an interview last week, CBS Sports' Josina Anderson asked Adams about the adjustment from Rodgers to Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr.

"Any time you change quarterbacks from Hall of Famer to Hall of Famer ... it's gonna be a little bit of an adjustment," Adams responded.

After the comment received some blowback, Adams clarified his sentiment without retracting anything he said while speaking to reporters Sunday:

"Derek's career, honestly, you look at the numbers that he's had and what he's had to work with and the adversity that he's had in Oakland and coming to Vegas and the type of stuff that's been going on here in the past, which, hopefully we're putting all that stuff to bed, but, yeah, I didn't deliver that message the way that I had in my head. So later, when I saw [the original quote] written out, it kind of made my stomach drop a little bit because I was like, 'Oh, god, here we go. People are going to blow this up and take everything I say, and we're the only team in camp right now.'"

The Rodgers-Adams connection was one of the most successful quarterback-receiver pairings in NFL history.

After a decent start to his career in 2014 and 2015, Adams averaged 142 targets for approximately 97 receptions and 1,200 receiving yards per season, along with 11.5 touchdowns, from 2016 to 2021.

Despite their success together, Adams reportedly rejected a contract offer from the Packers this offseason that would have paid him more than the Raiders' offer of five years and $141.25 million. The five-time Pro Bowler wanted to be in Las Vegas and reunited with Carr, who was his college teammate for three seasons at Fresno State from 2011 to 2013.

Rodgers is very aware of what he's doing at all times. ESPN's Kevin Van Valkenburg noted in January that the 38-year-old highlighted Atlas Shrugged on his bookshelf during an appearance on ESPN's Monday Night Football "ManningCast" last season because "it was the book with the biggest spine on his bookshelf" and he "suspected that alone might annoy certain people."

Even though Rodgers trolled his former teammate, this is an important training camp for the Packers. They are betting on Lazard to up his game and make up for some of the production lost when Adams got traded.

Lazard is coming off his best season in 2021. The 26-year-old had 513 receiving yards and eight touchdowns on 40 receptions in 15 games. He has only had two games with at least 100 yards in four seasons.

The Packers have won 13 games during the regular season in each of the past three seasons but have fallen short of the Super Bowl every year.

Josh McDaniels wants Derek Carr to be thinking like a champion in 2022.

Specifically, Stephen Curry.

The Las Vegas Raiders head coach has been showing Carr film of Curry throughout the offseason as McDaniels helps the quarterback refine his technique.

“The way Curry has the patience and the discipline on his pump fakes before taking those threes … that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about,” McDaniels said, per Peter King of NBC Sports. “In a double move, if you don’t run the first route well first, the defender never jumps the play, right? Today we didn’t even run the first route, so the defender never budged—he knew the [receiver] was going up the field. Curry’s pump fakes are real. They make the defenders go zooming by.”

McDaniels, in his second stint as an NFL head coach, is attempting to help Carr make the leap from above-average NFL quarterback to bonafide star. The Raiders made an all-in effort to help Carr this offseason, reuniting him with former Fresno State teammate Davante Adams to give the offense a true WR1.

Carr is heading into his ninth season as the Raiders' starting quarterback but has never made a leap into the elite. He threw for a career-high 4,804 yards last season but was limited to 23 touchdowns against 14 interceptions.

The Raiders signed Carr to a three-year, $121.5 million extension in April—a move that seemed to indicate a long-term commitment until contract details came out. Las Vegas could theoretically move on from Carr early next offseason and take only a $5.6 million dead-cap charge.

If Carr doesn't heed McDaniels' teachings and become a signal-caller Splash Brother, this relationship may be one-and-done.

Davante Adams is already making headlines with his new team.

The wide receiver turned heads when he seemed to call Derek Carr a surefire future Hall of Famer like Aaron Rodgers during an interview with CBS Sports on Friday: "Any time you change quarterbacks from Hall of Famer to Hall of Famer ... it's going to be a little bit of an adjustment."

He provided some more context to the situation Sunday.

"But what I meant to say was, 'Even if you go Hall of Famer to Hall of Famer, it's an adjustment,'" he said, per Paul Gutierrez of ESPN. "I wasn't saying, 'Hall of Famer Aaron to Hall of Famer Derek.' So, I'm not retracting my statement at all."

He also compared the situation to a rapper delivering lines in a song:

"Being a rapper, it's very vital, you've got to have the bars, obviously. You know you've got to have the bars. The line's got to be there. But a very, very vital and critical piece of being a rapper is the delivery, right? I wasn't a great rapper the other day.

"What I'm not going to do is take away from that statement because, why is Derek not a Hall of Famer? What I meant, I left one key word out of there because that's not exactly what I meant. But I do think that Derek's career is Hall of Fame-worthy, and why not? Does he have the MVPs right now? No. Has he won a Super Bowl? Not yet. That's obviously what we're chasing."

In fairness to Carr, few quarterbacks in NFL history can match Rodgers' resume.

The Green Bay Packers signal-caller is a four-time MVP, one-time Super Bowl champion, 10-time Pro Bowler and four-time All-Pro selection who has thrown for more than 4,000 yards in 10 different seasons.

Adams helped him put up some of those numbers as one of the best receivers in the league during his eight seasons with the Packers, five of which saw him selected to the Pro Bowl.

Carr is a three-time Pro Bowler himself, but he has never won a playoff game and is just 57-70 in his career as a starter. The winning is where he is lacking compared to some of his peers, but Adams could help change that.

"But what I'm not going to do is say Derek is not going to be a Hall of Famer because at the end of the day I believe—and this is not putting any expectations or any added pressure on him because he puts that type of pressure on himself because of what he expects every time he touches the field," Adams said.

Carr and Adams were college teammates at Fresno State and will be front and center for the Raiders for years to come after the wide receiver signed a five-year deal with the team following the trade that brought him over from Green Bay.

If they can compete in a daunting AFC West for the foreseeable future and add some playoff success to the individual accomplishments already on Carr's resume, the Hall of Fame won't be out of the question.