Jamal Adams watches, doesn’t practice on day one. His new Seahawks deal may be ‘very soon’
Jamal Adams made a fashionably late entrance to the first practice of Seahawks training camp.
Then he didn’t practice in it.
His coach says that’s not because the 25-year-old All-Pro safety doesn’t (yet) have his rich, new contract.
Pete Carroll said Adams often has been in the training room since reporting to team headquarters for camp on time Tuesday. He’s getting rehabilitative work done on his shoulder and both hands he had surgically repaired this winter.
On the field Wednesday, Adams wore his white, number-33 practice jersey over a blue-and-gray hoodie as he watched instead of participated in the opening practice. He wore black sneakers, a gray Seahawks cap over diamond studs in his ears and a smile. He talked to fellow starting safety Quandre Diggs, who was kneeling beside him between defensive series.
Adams gave rookie cornerback Tre Brown a high-five. He threw both of his arms skyward to celebrate a pass breakout by the defense in the no-pads 11-on-11 scrimmage. He danced to the mostly rap music the training-camp DJ was blaring across the lakeside fields.
Immediately after practice ended, he joined his teammates in walking over to within 20 yards of the hundreds of season-ticket holder who attended the camp’s first practice. Adams waved at men, women and children who were screaming his name as part of the first Seahawks practice since training camp in pre-pandemic 2019 to have fans in attendance.
Adams looked very much “amicable,” to use the word Carroll has been employing since early June to describe the contract talks between Seattle and its star strong safety.
The coach said Adams has been in all team and position meetings, watching film and going through walk-through practices in the morning.
Him fully practicing? That is likely to come after he signs that contract.
“The conversations have been ongoing for some time, and been very amicable,” Carroll said following Wednesday’s practice. “He’s in a good place. They’ve worked really hard to this point.
“I’m very hopeful that it’s going to get taken care of here, soon.
“Very soon.”
Adams stayed away from offseason workouts, as most Seahawks veterans had initially decided to do. Then last month Carroll excused him from the team’s three-day, mandatory minicamp. The coach said that was so Adams could tend to “family stuff.”
Adams is entering the final year of the contract Seattle inherited from the New York Jets. The Seahawks traded two first-round draft choices and veteran starter Bradley McDougald for Adams 12 months ago.
That price wasn’t for Seattle to rent Adams for one season then a disgruntled second one.
Now, it’s investment time for the Seahawks.
Adams is set to earn $9.86 million this year. Since the day they traded a king’s ransom (by NFL and Seattle draft guru general manager John Schneider’s standards) for him, the Seahawks have been budgeting to make Adams the league’s richest safety. That means $16 million or more per season, beginning in 2022.
Last year, Justin Simmons re-set the bar for the league’s safeties with a new deal in Denver, above Budda Baker’s with Arizona. Simmons’ contract is worth $15.25 million per season.
The 28-year-old veteran has been selected to two fewer Pro Bowl teams than has Adams (three). Simmons has not been named All-Pro. Adams was an All-Pro for the Jets in 2019.
Adams’ agent did not return a message from The News Tribune seeking a status update this past weekend.
Adams set an NFL record for defensive backs with 9 1/2 sacks last season, his debut for the Seahawks. That likely upped his asking price. It forced Schneider and Seattle’s executive salary-cap planner Matt Thomas to consider how above that $16 million per year to pay Adams.
Thing is, Carroll doesn’t want Adams blitzing as frequently in 2021 as he had to in the first half of the 2020 season.
What is the value for his premium, unique skill as a blitzing pass rusher?
Seattle’s defense had next-to-no pass-rushing threat without Adams blitzing, until the team traded for Cincinnati Pro Bowl end Carlos Dunlap in October. Dunlap revitalized the pass rush. Carroll then used Adams more in coverage to help a unit that was giving up league records for passing yards through the first two months of last season.
Dunlap is re-signed and back on Seattle’s defensive line. So is fellow end Benson Mayowa. The Seahawks also signed former 49ers pass rushers Aldon Smith and Kerry Hyder.
Alton Robinson is likely to have a larger role after an impressive rookie season with limited snaps. Fellow end L.J. Collier is working into a outside-inside hybrid role as a pass rusher in hopes of becoming worthy of Seattle’s first-round pick in 2019.
The plan of Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. is all those pass rushers up front reducing the need for Adams to take as many chances blitzing and leaving the Seahawks’ back door open to huge pass plays in 2021.
Adams can rightly counter that he set his league record for sacks last season while so injured he needed multiple surgeries, on his shoulder for a torn labrum and on broken fingers, this winter. Imagine, his side is saying, what he will be for the Seahawks fully healthy.
Carroll said Wednesday those surgeries would have kept Adams from practicing these first days of training camp, anyway, so him missing these workouts until his new deal is done is no big deal.
If that’s true, than him not practicing Wednesday was not a duplication of what All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner did in training camp in the summer of 2019. He was present and involved in everything but the practices until he got his new, three-year, $54 million deal a few days into camp. That made him the league’s highest-paid middle linebacker.
Wagner’s $18 million per year is likely Seattle’s ceiling on a new contract for Adams. Signs are the team has been deciding how much between $16 million and $18 million per season to pay Adams. Plus, up-front bonuses and guaranteed money are always the last major sticking points to any big contract.
Carroll—and Adams—gave every indication on day one of training camp those points are going to stick much longer.
This story was originally published July 28, 2021 at 6:20 PM.
