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It’s not going to be anywhere near
what he reportedly wanted from the Jets.
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler and Dan Graziano announced that the Seattle Seahawks intend on locking safety Jamal Adams to a long-term deal this off-season.
Obviously, the Seahawks were going to look to sign him long-term after giving up two first-round picks and a third-round selection. That isn’t the kind of draft capital you part with for a short-term rental.
But here’s the thing – He’s not going to get anywhere near the money he was reportedly looking to get from the Jets, somewhere around $20 million-a-year,
That was never going to happen with the Jets, and it’s not going to happen with the Seahawks.
It will be more around $14 million, the range of the safety deals given to Arizona’s Budda Baker, Chicago’s Eddie Jackson, Tennessee’s Kevin Byard, Kansas City’s Tyrann Mathieu and Washington’s Landon Collins.
So it’s not going to be $20 million-a-year, but more around $14, and that might be even hard to do for Seattle, considering they’re projected to have just $4.1 million in cap space according to website “Over the Cap.”
The salary cap is expected to be around $180 million down from 198.2 million last year. It was projected to go up to around $220 million, if last year was a normal season, without a pandemic leading to mostly empty stadiums.
So this is a really bad year to be looking for a long-term blockbuster deal, especially as a safety.
Safety contracts are very, very risky due to the injury-prone nature of the position. It’s a brutal position physically – a lot of major collisions, especially when you play the position like linebacker, which is what Adams does. Adams is a player the size of a safety, who mostly plays in the box, like a linebacker.
And from late in the 2019 season with the Jets, through all of the 2020 season in Seattle, Adams was ravaged by injuries. First, he suffered a high ankle sprain with the Jets that ended his season prematurely in 2019, and then in his first year in Seattle, he suffered a pulled groin leading him to miss a month, and also suffered injuries to both shoulder (one needing surgery after the season), and a couple of broken fingers.
Hopefully for Adams’ sake, this bad streak of injuries will end, but at the safety position, that’s tough to predict.
Look at Marcus Maye, who had a really bad injury streak, his last year at Florida, and then his first three years with the Jets. He didn’t miss a game last year, but did battle some injuries.
So it will be very interesting to see what Adams contract with the Seahawks looks like, considering the cap is doing down and the Seahawks very little cap space.
Once again, it’s not going to anywhere near $20 million-a-year, Not even close.
But you get the sense that Adams is willing to take a lot less from Seattle than he would have taken with the Jets. He will likely give the Seahawks a discount. He wasn’t happy with the Jets late in his career, so it would’ve taken a king’s ransom to make him “happy” with Gang Green.
But with Seattle, there is no doubt he will be a lot more flexible in his demands.
So getting two first-round picks, and more, for a safety, who the Jets never would’ve paid what he wanted, was really beat up over the last year, and didn’t want to be with the Jets anymore, is quite a haul.
February 16, 2021
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