Jamal Adams may not play for Seahawks again this season. What’s his future beyond this?
There are increasing signs Jamal Adams may not play for the Seahawks again this season.
Will he play for them again, ever?
That’s what many Seattle fans are asking.
The $70 million safety wasn’t on the team’s plane to Nashville Friday. For the second time in six days, Adams won’t play in a must-win game for the Seahawks (7-7). His teammates will play on with NFC defensive player of the week Julian Love instead of Adams in the middle of their defense Sunday at 5-9 Tennessee (10 a.m., channel 7)
Last Monday night Adams wanted to play through his knee pain. Coach Pete Carroll decided to make him inactive for Seattle’s game against Philadelphia. The three-time Pro Bowl safety then wasn’t in the stadium for the game. Carroll believed Adams was home. Meanwhile Love played every snap at safety next to Quandre Diggs. Love had two interceptions in the fourth quarter to seal the Seahawks’ come-from-behind win over the Eagles that revived Seattle’s season.
Asked Friday why Adams wasn’t making the trip to Tennessee after the team declared him out for Sunday’s game, Carroll said “he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need to go.”
Carroll said Friday he was fine with Adams not being at a home game with his team because he was inactive.
“I’m not worried about that, at all,” Carroll said.
This week Adams again didn’t practice. He’s grinding with knee pain he’s had since surgery to repair the quadriceps tendon he tore in September 2022 blitzing Denver quarterback Russell Wilson.
Adams hasn’t practiced or played since Seattle’s loss at San Francisco Dec. 10. In that game, wide receiver Deebo Samuel ran past Adams for a 54-yard touchdown. It gave the 49ers the lead for good in their 28-16 win.
After that fourth consecutive Seahawks loss, Carroll uncharacteristically called out Adams and 2022 Pro Bowl cornerback Riq Woolen for not playing as coached to defend the 49ers’ favorite plays.
“There was nothing special about them running Deebo on a deep crosser,” Carroll said of Adams’ touchdown allowed the day after that game. “He’s been doing that his whole career. And we saw it and we didn’t play it right.”
That’s not what Carroll and general manager John Schneider traded two first-round draft choices to the New York Jets in 2020, then spent $70 million, for.
Adams said in the locker room in Santa Clara, California, after Seattle’s last loss to the Niners he expected quarterback Brock Purdy to throw the ball sooner and shorter than he did to Samuel for the score. That’s because the Seahawks had a double blitz with inside linebackers Bobby Wagner and Jordyn Brooks on the play. The Niners’ line blocked both.
That allowed Purdy the time to wait for Samuel to run deep past the surprised Adams for the touchdown that sent San Francisco on its way to a fifth consecutive victory over Seattle.
“Obviously, I was sitting. I was waiting on the (shorter) dig (route), because I kept seeing the ‘X’ (wide receiver outside) dig behind me,” Adams said minutes after that 49ers game. “And then...they brought Deebo over the top.
“I was too short. I was sitting flat-footed. And, obviously, you kind of expect the ball to come out quicker. ...
“Obviously, I take that heat, for sure.”
He did.
Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt benched Woolen and started Mike Jackson at cornerback against the Eagles Monday night. Carroll wouldn’t say Friday whether Jackson or Woolen was starting at Tennessee — though the fact the Seahawks beat the Eagles while holding Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts to 143 yards passing with two interceptions suggested it was going to be Jackson again Sunday.
Meanwhile, Adams is so far out of the defense and team he’s not even been with it the last two games. The 49ers game and postgame two weeks ago was the last time Adams has talked publicly.
Days before that 49ers game, Adams defended his social-media comment of “Yikes” on a photograph of a former Jets beat writer with his wife. The reporter had written on social media “Yikes” above a video of Adams giving up the game-winning touchdown to tight end Jake Ferguson in the fourth quarter of Seattle’s loss at Dallas the week before.
“When others go low, I go lower,” Adams said at his locker before a Seahawks practice Dec. 6.
The Seahawks didn’t trade two first-round picks then spend $70 million on Adams for that, either.
Carroll said Thursday the Seahawks have thought about the possibility of shutting down Adams for the remainder of the season. Seattle hosts Pittsburgh (8-7) and plays at Arizona (3-11 entering Sunday) the next two weeks to end the regular season.
“He’s still trying to get back,” Carroll said Friday. “He’s still working at it, trying to find the right preparation process to make sure that we can maximize.
“The rigors of the season caught up (to him) a little bit.
“It’s a very difficult injury and he’s handled it amazingly, and he’s battling. He worked really hard to get back this week, couldn’t do it. So we’ll see about next week.
The coach was asked Friday if Adams is going to play again this season.
“We’ve talked about it. We talked about it (Thursday),” Carroll said.
“We’re still working at it and still competing.”
Jamal Adams targeted
Not that it is the gauge for the team’s decision-making on players, but this season Adams has become one of the more unpopular Seahawks with fans in recent team history.
This may be about the time Carroll, Schneider and the Seahawks are wondering: Is Adams worth it?
The 28-year-old safety hasn’t been healthy throughout any one of four seasons he’s played for the Seahawks. He’s had surgery on his hand, shoulder and knee. He’s also had a concussion, this season. That was in his season-debut game Oct. 2 at the New York Giants.
After the league’s sideline concussion advisor helped rule with Seattle’s medical staff Adams out of that first game he’d played in 13 months, he yelled and charged at the concussion advisor. Team personnel had to separate Adams from the doctor and escort him to the locker room.
A week later, Adams berated and contacted the league’s sideline concussion advisor during a game in Cincinnati, after Jake Bobo got hit in the head and was headed to the sideline for assessment for a head injury. The NFL fined Adams $50,000 for that.
He’s allowed the decisive then the go-ahead touchdowns of the last two games he’s played, both Seahawks losses. His missed tackle rate this season, per Pro Football Reference, is 15.8% (nine missed tackles and 48 stops). That’s by far the highest missed-tackle rate of his career.
His specialty is sacks. He had 9 1/2 of them in 2020, his first Seattle season. That set an NFL record for defensive backs.
He hasn’t had a sack in three years since.
Carroll used Adams as a specialty blitzer that first season with the team. He blitzed a career-high 98 times in 12 games in 2020, according to Pro Football Reference. Since that season he’s blitzed 44 times in 12 games, one time in his one game in 2022 and just 22 times in nine games this season. The reason: His knee isn’t allowing him to run and move as fast laterally to avoid blocks and chase quarterbacks as he did before the torn quadriceps.
With Adams blitzing less and back in coverage more, offenses are targeting him ultra-successfully with passes. He’s allowed 25 completions in 31 attempts for 175 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions this season. That is an 80.6% completion rate and a passer rating of 111.7 allowed by Adams this season. Both marks are the highest he’s allowed in his career.
Jamal Adams’ contract
Here’s what Carroll and Schneider must consider beyond this season:
Adams has two years after this one remaining on that $70 million contract with $38 million guaranteed. He signed it before the 2021 season. It was the richest contract for a safety in NFL history.
Like most of the league’s big contracts, the bulk of its value and salary-cap charges are back-loaded to the end of the deal.
Adams has scheduled cap charges of $26.9 million in 2024 and $27.9 million for 2025. Only quarterback Geno Smith has a higher scheduled cap charge on the team for next year ($31.2 million). At a minimum the Seahawks are likely to ask Adams to renegotiate his contract to allow for a cap-friendly cap number next year.
That is, if the Seahawks want him back.
The Seahawks are projected to be in the red, more than $9 million over the salary cap, for 2024 based on current contracts, according to overthecap.com. So they are going to have to cut veteran contracts.
Plus, Love is performing exceptionally well on a contract that has a relatively low $5 million base salary for 2024. That is the second and final year of the free-agent contract the former captain of the Giants signed before this season, when the Seahawks didn’t know if Adams would return from his major injury to play in 2023.
Would Carroll and Schneider release Adams this coming offseason?
Doing so would leave the team with a sunk salary-cap charge of $20.8 million for 2024 with a cap savings of only $6.08 million, per overthecap.com. NFL accounting rules allow teams the option of spreading such a cost across the remaining seasons of a contract by designating a player a post-June 1 cut. Such a move would divide Adams’ $20.8 million cap charge for 2024 evenly, costly Seattle $10.4 million each in ‘24 and ‘25 for him not playing for the team.
Carroll and Schneider could believe, plausibly, they haven’t had Adams at full health yet in Seattle — and thus they have yet to realize the possible full return of their investment.
Then again, with Adams turning 29 next season, is this it? Have their already seen their best possible return for what they’ve invested in him?
“So far, he’s wanted to keep going and driving and see what he can make of it,” Carroll said, regarding the rest of this season. “I just support everything where he’s coming from, in every way.
“We’ll take it one shot at a time, and we’ll figure it out together.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2023 at 7:57 PM.
