New era: Remaking Seahawks cut Jamal Adams, Quandre Diggs, Will Dissly
The Pete Carroll/John Schneider Seahawks made Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs the richest pair of safeties on a team in the NFL.
The new Mike Macdonald/John Schneider Seahawks just made them unemployed.
A league source told The News Tribune on Tuesday morning Seattle was releasing $70 million, three-time Pro Bowl safety Jamal Adams and $39 million, three-time Pro Bowl safety Quandre Diggs.
The team then announced those cuts later Tuesday, eight days before the new league year begins.
Cutting the 28-year-old Adams, often injured since he arrived from New York in Seattle’s failed trade of two first-round draft choices to the Jets in the summer of 2020, saves the Seahawks $6.9 million in salary-cap space for this year. The move carries a dead-cap charge of $20.8 million for 2024.
Releasing Diggs, the team’s 31-year-old defensive co-captain, clears $11 million from the Seahawks’ cap for this year.
A league source also told The News Tribune the Seahawks are releasing tight end Will Dissly from the hometown University of Washington to save another $6.97 million in cap space.
The team confirmed Dissly’s release Tuesday afternoon.
The moves save Seattle a total of $24.87 million against the 2024 salary cap, and leaves the Seahawks with an estimated $41.6 million in cap space, per overthecap.com. Teams must be compliant with that $255.4 million cap by March 13, the day the new league year begins.
Adams had been scheduled to have the highest salary-cap charge on the team this year, at $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.
The News Tribune asked Schneider last week at the NFL scouting combine if Adams is in 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 last week.
Adams posted a response on his X account online later that afternoon: “Looking forward to the opportunity.”
It’s not going to come with the Seahawks.
Next at safety
While Adams was having his issues last season, Julian Love flourished. The former New York Giants captain the Seahawks signed before last season had a career year in his Seattle debut. He made his first Pro Bowl.
Love, 25, had a career-high four interceptions last season. This year will be the final one of his Seahawks contract.
The team liked the tackling and tenaciousness of rookie safety Jerrick Reed on special teams last season. He could get a chance in the defense this year.
And the Seahawks can use the cap space they are saving by cutting Adams, Diggs and Dissly to sign another younger, cheaper safety to start with Love in the back of Macdonald’s new Seattle defense. Such as, say, Geno Stone.
The 24-year-old Stone had a breakout season in 2023 playing in Macdonald’s Baltimore Ravens defense. Stone’s seven interceptions led the AFC last season. He’s heading into free agency next week.
He’s in line for a huge raise from his rookie contract that just ended — but nothing close to what the Seahawks have been paying Adams and Diggs for less production the last couple years.
“I just want to be somewhere I’m appreciated,” Stone told NFL Network last month.
No one in the NFL appreciates how Stone became what he was last season for the Ravens better than Macdonald.
Jamal Adams’ history in Seattle
Adams departs Seattle as one of the more polarizing figures in recent Pacific Northwest sports history.
He arrived less than four years ago as a former sixth-overall pick and All-Pro safety unique for his tackling and pass rushing. Carroll, the Seahawks’ final football authority from 2010 until his firing as coach this January, was a former safety and defensive backs coach. He coveted Adams’ skills as unique for a Seattle defense the coach was trying to restore to Legion of Boom-era Super Bowl success.
It all failed.
Not initially, though.
In his first season with the Seahawks, Adams blitzed a career-high 98 times in 12 games and finished that 2020 season with 9 1/2 sacks. That was a record for NFL defensive backs in a season. But he missed four games with his first of multiple major injuries that required surgeries.
That first Seahawks seasons prompted the team to sign him to a contract extension worth $70 million. It was the richest in league history for a safety, with $38 million guaranteed.
That’s what the team will continue to pay for with Adams now gone.
In 2021 Carroll didn’t trust his parade of new cornerbacks in press coverage outside and felt he needed Adams and Diggs back deep to help them cover receivers down the field. Adams blitzed less than half as much in his second Seattle season. He had zero sacks, and more injuries. He again played in just 12 games.
He returned from shoulder and hand surgeries to start the opening game of the 2022 season against Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos. On his first blitz of that season, Adams tore his quadriceps tendon pressuring and hitting Wilson. He didn’t play again that 2022 season.
His doctors told Adams his knee would hurt into mid-2024 following surgery to repair the quad tendon. Adams played through that for parts of nine games of the 2023 season. He made his season debut Oct. 2. That night early in Seattle’s win over the New York Giants in the New Jersey Meadowlands, Adams was concussed by the knee of Daniel Jones while trying to tackle the Giants quarterback on a scramble run.
Adams left the game. He berated an NFL concussion advisor on the sideline outside the team’s medical observation tent. Team staffers had to separate him from the doctor and escort Adams to the locker room.
Adams returned to play the following week at Cincinnati. When teammate Jake Bobo had to leave that game to get assessed for a possible concussion, the league said Adams confronted and contacted another NFL sideline concussion advisor. The league fined Adams $50,000 for that incident.
Also last season, Adams defended his social-media comment of “Yikes” on a photograph a former Jets beat writer posted on himself 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 following week, San Francisco’s Deebo Samuel easily raced behind Adams for a 49ers touchdown on a play Carroll said the Seahawks practiced against and expected.
Adams took the blame in the locker room after another loss for Seattle against its rival Niners.
“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.”
That was the last game he’d play for the Seahawks.
The next week, Adams was not at the stadium while his Seahawks rallied to beat the Philadelphia Eagles on a Monday night. Adams left the team after Carroll informed him he wouldn’t be playing in that game.
The following week, Adams wasn’t on the Seahawks’ trip to Tennessee for a Christmas Eve game against the Titans. Carroll said the safety with his pained knee didn’t need to be there.
The Seahawks put Adams on injured reserve the next week, ending his season.
And his rocky Seattle tenure.
Quandre Diggs’ end
Diggs didn’t have nearly the tumult Adams had with the Seahawks.
He remained a joking, likable leader and advisor to teammates in the locker room. Fellow players voted him a team captain for the second consecutive season last summer.
But in the end, Macdonald and Schneider determined Diggs’ play didn’t match his pay.
He was averaging earning $13 million per season on his deal that was to run through 2024. Yet last season Diggs allowed the highest passer rating in coverage of his nine-year NFL career: 103.9 per Pro Football Reference. Diggs had gone four consecutive seasons from 2019 through ‘21 with at least five interceptions. In 2021 he became the only NFL player with at least five picks in five straight years.
Last season Diggs had just one interception, in 36 targets. It was the lowest total for a season in his career.
Will Dissly’s cost
Dissly had multiple season-ending injuries after Seattle drafted the former UW defensive lineman in the fourth round in 2018.
His rookie season ending after four standout games because of a ruptured patellar tendon.
His 2019 season ended one month into it with a non-contact tear of his Achilles tendon. Carroll called that a “devastating” injury, after Dissly had four touchdown catches to begin that season.
Yet he returned in 2020, then missed only three games the last three seasons. Instead of letting him go in free agency at the end of his rookie contract, Schneider re-signed Dissly to a three-year, $24 million deal in the spring of 2022. The value of that deal surprised some, given Dissly hadn’t had a season with more than 24 receptions in the NFL.
He rewarded the team’s faith in him with a career-high 34 catches in 2022. He had only 17 catches in 16 games playing a career-low 39% of snaps in 2023. He played through hip and shoulder pain while Seattle’s offense used fellow tight ends Noah Fant and Colby Parkinson.
Schneider said last week at the combine he was meeting with Parkinson’s agent in an effort by Seattle to re-sign the 6-foot-7 tight end beyond his rookie contract that has ended. Parkinson is eligible for unrestricted free agency that begins with its negotiating period Monday.
Fant’s contract has also expired. Denver’s former first-round pick the Seahawks acquired in the Wilson trade in March 2022 seems destined to leave in free agency after the market opens March 13.
This story was originally published March 5, 2024 at 11:31 AM.
