There is a reason that people call the practice of analyzing athlete trade rumors “the silly season.”
Once social media came along, the process of “reading the tea leaves” grew exponentially. Oakland Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams knows that, as he’s having a whole lot of fun with all the trade winds swirling around him.
Once he posted a photo of legendary American poet Edgar Allen Poe in his Instagram stories, the NFL world was off and running, hypothesizing that this post was a clear signal that Adams was set to join the Baltimore Ravens.
While only Adams knows for sure what the true motivation is/was behind posting the photo of Poe on IG, one has to believe that he was intentionally stirring the pot.
While this Instagram Stories post received extensive media coverage, his next post received significantly less attention.
Adams treated his followers (and all of the media with their eyes fixed on him) to the famous Poe quote: “Believe nothing that you hear and half of what you see.”
This post is, arguably, equal in importance to the first one, and by making it, Adams is basically telling his followers to take the direct interpretation of his first post and now negate it.
If post #1 said, “I’m joining the Ravens,” then this post tells you, “Everything you have been reading about this situation is wrong. Nothing is decided yet.”
It’s all an epic troll job.
Or we are all just getting super meta right now when analyzing the data. Does the falling tree in the forest actually make a sound if no one is around to hear it?
Either way, whether he comes to Baltimore or not. We do know that if attention was Adams’s ultimate goal, he certainly achieved it.