Jamal Adams has a new team, new home. The Seahawks will be seeing him there soon
Jamal Adams has a new home.
His old Seahawks will be seeing him again there soon.
The 28-year-old former All-Pro safety Seattle gave a record contract to in 2021 — then cut this spring after four polarizing seasons — is signing with the Tennessee Titans. Adams’ agents with Universal Sports Management confirmed the one-year contract with the Titans on Thursday morning.
The Seahawks and Titans will have joint practices in training camp Aug. 14 and 15 in Nashville. The teams play each other there Aug. 17 in their second preseason game.
Suddenly, Seattle’s first joint practices in a generation have some added spice. Think DK Metcalf might be woofin’ some with Adams, a brash, three-time Pro Bowl selection, in those practices in the muggy Tennessee heat?
New Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, the former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Seattle hired this winter to replace fired Pete Carroll, used his familiarity with the Titans in the AFC to line up the joint practices.
The Seahawks cut the $70 million Adams on March 5, the same day Macdonald and the new Seahawks regime released $39 million safety partner and defensive captain Quandre Diggs.
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, saved the Seahawks $6.9 million in salary-cap space for this year. The move carried a dead-cap charge of $20.8 million for 2024.
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 GM John Schneider traded for him.
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.
Adams’ Seattle legacy
Adams departed Seattle four months ago as one of the more polarizing figures in recent Pacific Northwest sports history.
He arrived 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 in 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 the first of his multiple major injuries that required surgeries. That first Seahawks season 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.
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..
Now, he’s gone to Tennessee.