We’ll say this for the Seahawks — they’re not afraid to deal away their first-round picks for the talent they want. In previous years, head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider have dealt first-round picks for receiver Percy Harvin and tight end Jimmy Graham, and given the team’s hit rate with the first-round picks they’ve had since 2011, you can understand why.
But the deal Seattle made with the Jets on Saturday puts the Seahawks in an entirely new arena of draft capital risk. As first reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Carroll and Schneider have sent their first-round picks both 2021 and 2022, as well as a 2021 third-round pick and safety Bradley McDougald, to the Jets for the services of safety Jamal Adams and a 2022 fourth-round pick.
Pending physicals, the deal gives the Jets the picks they need to build around Sam Darnold, while booting a player who had made his dissatisfaction with the organization abundantly clear. In a recent interview with the New York Daily News, Adams said that Jets head coach Adam Gase was not the right leader to help the team reach the “promised land.”
“As a leader, what really bothers me is that he doesn’t have a relationship with everybody in the building, Adams said. “At the end of the day, he doesn’t address the team. If there’s a problem in the locker room, he lets another coach address the team. If we’re playing sh—y and we’re losing, he doesn’t address the entire team as a group at halftime. He’ll walk out of the locker room and let another coach handle it.”
Adams, whose rookie contract runs out after the 2021 season because the Jets exercised his fifth-year option, has been saying for a while that he’s unhappy with the team, and that he wants to be paid at among the highest rate for defensive players.
Jamal Adams’ future contract demands loom large in trade talks. If he wants pay among top defensive players – which one source whose team has looked into Adams believes – that’s well above $20M per year, while safety market is below $15M. Tough for a SS, no matter how good.
— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) June 19, 2020
Adams is one of the best safeties in the NFL, and he adds a dynamic presence to Seattle’s defense, but when you factor in what he’ll need to be paid to keep him happy over the next few years, this is an enormous commitment on Seattle’s part.