Wide Receiver, Los Angeles Rams — Club Shay Shay
Davante Adams' Audemars Piguet Royal Oak: The Watch That Was Once Dismissed on the Wrist of a Player Who Was Too
Spotted on Club Shay Shay: Davante Adams wearing an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. The only player in NFL history to lead the league in receiving touchdowns with three different teams — Packers, Raiders, Rams. The watch was designed overnight in 1972, dismissed as too strange and too expensive, and became the defining luxury sports watch of its era. The pairing is not accidental.
| Davante Adams — AP Royal Oak on wrist. Source: Club Shay Shay |
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak — octagonal bezel, tapisserie dial, integrated bracelet |
Davante Lavell Adams was born December 24, 1992, in East Palo Alto, California — one of the Bay Area's more economically challenged communities, pressed against the prosperous city of Palo Alto by geography but separated from it by circumstance. He attended Palo Alto High School across the border in Palo Alto proper, where he was a two-way starter in his senior season: 64 receptions, 1,094 yards, 12 touchdowns on offence; 44 tackles, two forced fumbles, an interception on defence. He led the school to a CIF state championship. He also played basketball seriously enough to be considered a two-star recruit. The football and basketball résumé was real. The academic record was not. By the time college coaches came looking, Adams had put himself in a hole with his grades in his first two years that nearly cost him his opportunity altogether.
Keith Williams, then a receivers coach at Fresno State, had come to Palo Alto High School looking at a different player entirely. He only learned about Adams because the head coach mentioned there was another receiver worth seeing. When Williams checked Adams' academic status, the news was poor — he hadn't qualified yet going into his final semester, and even the schools that knew about him were hesitant. Adams took eight classes in his senior year while most students were taking four, dug himself out of the hole he had built, and enrolled at Fresno State. He played two seasons for the Bulldogs, set school career records for receptions and touchdowns despite only two years of eligibility, led the nation in 2013 with 1,719 receiving yards and 24 touchdown receptions — a Mountain West Conference record — and declared for the draft before his junior season even began.
The Green Bay Packers selected him in the second round, 53rd overall, in the 2014 NFL Draft. He arrived behind Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb in the depth chart, finished his first two seasons with modest numbers, and by his third year had begun to establish what he was becoming. From 2018 through 2021 he was arguably the best wide receiver in football — three seasons of 110-plus catches, 1,350-plus yards, and 11-plus touchdowns, a combination no player in NFL history has matched. He and Aaron Rodgers became one of the most productive quarterback-receiver pairings of the modern era. In 2022 he was traded to the Las Vegas Raiders for a first- and second-round pick, signed a five-year, $141 million deal that made him the highest-paid wide receiver in NFL history at the time, broke the Raiders' single-season receiving yard record in his first season there, and led the league in touchdown receptions again. In 2025 he signed with the Los Angeles Rams, led the NFL in touchdown receptions for a third time with a different team, and became the only player in league history to accomplish that.
"He hadn't qualified yet going into the final semester of his senior season. My junior and senior year in high school, I had to really dig deep." — Davante Adams, on his early academic struggles
Timepiece
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
On the evening of April 10, 1971 — the night before the annual Basel Watch Fair — the managing director of Audemars Piguet called Gérald Genta, the most celebrated watch designer of his generation, and asked for a complete design by morning. The brief: an "unprecedented steel watch," something that had never been done before. Genta, drawing inspiration from a traditional diver's brass helmet — octagonal, bolted shut with exposed screws to maintain pressure — produced a sketch overnight. The result was the Royal Oak reference 5402ST, unveiled at Basel in 1972: an octagonal bezel secured by eight visible hexagonal screws, a blue tapisserie dial with its distinctive crosshatch pattern chosen from 300 candidate designs, and an integrated bracelet machined from a single block of steel so complex to manufacture that the first prototypes had to be made in white gold because no factory could cut steel to Genta's tolerances quickly enough.
At launch the Royal Oak was priced at 3,300 Swiss francs — more expensive than a gold Patek Philippe Calatrava, more than ten times the price of a Rolex Submariner. For a stainless steel sports watch, this was considered absurd. Watch industry commentators were baffled. Sales were slow. AP ran advertisements that leaned into the controversy: "The costliest stainless steel watch in the world." And then, gradually, the market caught up with the design. The Royal Oak became the template for the entire luxury sports watch category — the watch that proved a steel watch with an industrial aesthetic could be more desirable, more status-laden, and more expensive than a precious metal dress watch. Gerald Genta also designed the Patek Philippe Nautilus in 1976 and the IWC Ingenieur. All three drew from the same design language. None matched the cultural weight of the Royal Oak. Today it is one of the most sought-after and recognised watches in the world, worn by athletes, musicians, executives, and collectors who understand that its value was earned, not inherited.
| Origin | Designed by Gérald Genta overnight — unveiled Basel 1972 |
| Case | Octagonal bezel — 8 exposed hexagonal screws — integrated bracelet |
| Material | Stainless steel (also available: gold, two-tone, titanium) |
| Dial | Petite Tapisserie — blue, black, grey, or white depending on ref. |
| Movement | Caliber 7121 (Jumbo) / 3120 / 4302 depending on reference |
| Water resistance | 50 metres (standard) / 100 metres (Offshore) |
| Market value | From ~$25,000 USD (steel) — secondary market often considerably higher |
The Parallel
The Royal Oak was designed in one night and dismissed as too odd and too expensive. Davante Adams nearly didn't qualify academically for college, was only found because a coach happened to mention him to a recruiter who had come to see someone else, and arrived in the NFL as a second-round pick behind two established wide receivers on a team that didn't immediately need what he could do. Both of them required patience and time and the right context before the people around them understood what they were looking at.
The Royal Oak became the template for the entire luxury sports watch category — the watch that changed what steel could mean in haute horlogerie. Adams became the only player in NFL history to lead the league in receiving touchdowns with three different teams — with three different quarterbacks, in three different offensive systems — which is a different kind of historical singularity, and perhaps a better one, because it removes the variable of having one exceptional quarterback and isolates the receiver himself as the constant. The Royal Oak on his wrist at Club Shay Shay is not a coincidence of taste. It is a recognition of category.
The Watch the Culture Chose
The Royal Oak has become the watch that NFL and NBA athletes reach for when they want to signal serious taste rather than simple wealth. The Submariner signals arrival; the Royal Oak signals that the wearer knows the difference between arrival and understanding. It requires engagement — knowing what the octagonal bezel means, why the tapisserie pattern exists, who Gérald Genta was and what he accomplished on one phone call and one night's work. Davante Adams, appearing on Shannon Sharpe's podcast wearing it, is participating in that conversation. He came from East Palo Alto with bad grades and eight classes in one senior year and is now the only man in the history of his sport to do something that no one else has done three times over. The Royal Oak belongs on that wrist.
And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.
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