GM: Seahawks ‘still trying to figure out’ if Jamal Adams is in the new defense’s plans
Is Mike Macdonald enough of a defensive wizard to make Jamal Adams worth the hefty investment the Seahawks have made in him?
But before that: Will Adams get another chance to prove he could be worth it?
So far this offseason the $70 million, often-injured safety is in the same category as Geno Smith, Bobby Wagner, Jordyn Brooks, Damien Lewis, Noah Fant, Drew Lock and others with contract issues amid a regime change and new Seahawks era.
We’ll see.
The News Tribune asked general manager John Schneider Tuesday at the NFL scouting combine if Adams is in new coach Macdonald’s plans for Seattle’s new defense in 2024.
“Is he is in his plans? Yeah, I mean, we’ll find out,” Schneider said.
Adams posted a response on his X account online later Tuesday afternoon: “Looking forward to the opportunity.”
The GM said Tuesday he and Seahawks decision-makers are behind where they’d normally be evaluating players this time of the offseason.
For the last 14 combines, Schneider and his personnel and scouting men were in lock step with Pete Carroll and his coaching staff on what each side wanted and systems they had for players.
This offseason, Schneider has been with team chair Jody Allen and vice chair Bert Kolde, who fired Carroll, the league’s oldest coach at age 72. The GM has been hiring Macdonald, 36, to be the NFL’s youngest head coach. Then, Schneider’s been helping the first-time head man hire 23 assistant coaches. That long process ended last week.
This week, Macdonald, new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, defensive coordinator Aden Durde, special-teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh and those assistant coaches are back at Seahawks headquarters in Renton. They are skipping this combine to install the playbooks and new ways of playing before the players begin their offseason training at the team facility in early April.
So the decision about what to do with Adams will have to wait.
He has the highest salary-cap charge on the team this year, scheduled to be $26.92 million. He’s only played in 10 games the last two seasons because of a torn quadriceps tendon, subsequent chronic knee pain, a concussion, a shoulder injury, broken fingers and more injuries. He hasn’t played a full season for Seattle since Schneider traded two first-round draft choices to the New York Jets to acquire Adams in the summer 2020.
Schneider then gave Adams a $70 million contract extension, the richest deal for a safety in league history.
Jamal Adams in 2022, ‘23
Adams played one half of the opening game in 2022 before he tore his quadriceps tendon blitzing Russell Wilson in Seattle’s win over Denver. He was out until October of the 2023 season.
Upon his return, he was concussed in the first quarter of a game at the New York Giants. He berated an NFL sideline concussion advisor before Seahawks staffers escorted him into the locker room. He missed the rest of that game.
Two weeks later, Adams got in a confrontation with another league concussion advisor on the Seahawks’ sideline during a game at Cincinnati. The NFL fined him $50,000 for that.
Also during last season, 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.
In the nine games he played, opposing quarterbacks and play callers successfully targeted Adams for big pass plays. San Francisco’s Deebo Samuel got behind Adams for an easy touchdown in another Seattle loss to the 49ers in December.
Adams said in the locker room in Santa Clara, California, after that game he expected 49ers 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.
“I was too short. I was sitting flat-footed,” Adams said. “And, obviously, you kind of expect the ball to come out quicker...
“Obviously, I take that heat, for sure.”
After that, Adams wasn’t present for two of the Seahawks’ remaining games.
Adams wanted to play through his knee pain on a Monday night against Philadelphia in December. Carroll decided to make him inactive for the game. The three-time Pro Bowl safety then wasn’t in the stadium for that game. Carroll believed Adams was home.
When the Seahawks traveled to Tennessee for a game Christmas Eve, Adams wasn’t on the trip.
“He doesn’t need to go,” Carroll said at the time.
The Seahawks then shut down Adams for the remaining two games of the season, citing his aching knee. He said doctors told him he won’t be right until deep into 2024.
“It was a rough year for him, Jordyn and Jamal,” Schneider said Tuesday. “I’m sure Jamal would tell you guys it was hard for him. He fought his tail off to get back. He was constantly trying to be out there, trying to be active and working with the coaching staff, working with the trainers, strength and conditioning guys.
“I would expect him to be much healthier next year, yes.’’
Will he be playing for the Seahawks?
Jamal Adams’ contract
Adams’ 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.
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. If the team decides to keep him in Macdonald’s new Seahawks defense this year, Schneider is likely to ask Adams to renegotiate his contract to allow for a friendlier cap number than $26.9 million.
Plus, Julian Love performed exceptionally well at safety in 2023, into the Pro Bowl. Love has a Seahawks 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 last season. That was when the Seahawks didn’t know if Adams would return from his major injury to play in 2023.
Would Schneider release Adams this 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, costing Seattle $10.4 million each in ‘24 and ‘25 for him not playing for the team.
Schneider and Macdonald could believe, plausibly, the Seahawks haven’t had Adams at full health yet in Seattle — and thus they have yet to realize the possible full return of their investment. Macdonald hasn’t seen Adams in his defense. He could use him closer to the line of scrimmage as a hybrid linebacker, as Carroll tried to do while Adams was hurt the last three seasons.
Then again, with Adams turning 29 next season, is this it? Have the Seahawks already seen their best return for what they’ve invested in him?
“We’ll keep working through things,” Schneider said Tuesday.
“We’re still trying to figure all that out.
“We’re like, yeah, we went through the draft meetings, I’m getting caught up. I’m behind.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2024 at 1:37 PM.
