The Adams-LaFleur connection: How the Packers continue to scheme up 'free access' for the game's top receiver

How do you imagine Matt LaFleur spends his week? I like to think of him skulking in a Batcave somewhere thinking up all-manner of ways to get Davante Adams free-access releases.

Based on the variety of ways the Packers’ coach integrates the league’s top receiver into Green Bay’s set-up, he just might.

The LaFleur-Aaron Rodgers schematic marriage has been about a ton of things. The Packers want to run the ball. They back that up with a bunch of nifty play-action concepts. And LaFleur is forever making tiny week-to-week adjustments to the team’s dropback passing game to bust open routes down the field – one week the inside guy runs the post and outside guy hits the corner; the next it flip-flops.

But so much of what the coach-quarterback tandem has built still revolves around the unique brilliance of Adams.

Adams is, frankly, the best receiver in the league at… everything. He can shimmy shake and beat people quick to the inside. He can hesitate, stem, then blow by a boundary corner, rupturing a solid-looking coverage on a basic go-route. He crushes people over the middle on intermediate in-breaking route. And he appears to never be happier than when he’s baiting DBs on the in-breaking stuff before flying up field on a double-move. He plays inside, he plays outside. He plays at the top of the stack; he plays at the bottom.

Having an Adams changes your entire world as a game-planner.