Last season, Seahawks safety Jamal Adams had 62 solo tackles, 32 stops, 9.5 sacks, seven quarterback hits, and 16 quarterback hurries. Impressive numbers for a guy on a new team who missed four games due to injury, and played several games at less than 100%. Adams also was targeted 54 times in coverage, allowing 41 catches for 446 yards, 194 yards after the catch, three touchdowns, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 118.3.
But when it comes to Adams’ future in Seattle, the only number that really matters is two. That’s the number of first-round picks the Seahawks gave to the Jets for Adams’ services in the blockbuster trade the teams executed last July. Seattle gave up their first-round picks in 2021 and 2022, as well as a 2021 third-round pick, and safety Bradley McDougal for Adams and a 2022 fourth-round pick. That’s a lot to give up for any safety, especially for a guy who wound up playing nearer to the ball than in the deep third most of the time. Now, with Adams’ rookie contract running out at the end of the 2021 season, head coach Pete Carroll, general manager John Schneider, and Seattle’s salary cap experts have to put together a deal for Adams that will make him the NFL’s highest-paid safety. It’s not that they might or that they should — the Seahawks simply have no choice. Letting a guy walk after giving up that much for him just isn’t going to happen.
As ESPN’s Bill Barnwell points out, the three players who have recently been traded for two first-round picks, and went to their new teams without long-term club control, all set the market at their positions when they were re-signed… and they all did so quite decisively.
The numbers that matter for a Jamal Adams extension: the three other guys who were just traded for two first-round picks and how they pushed past the top of the market when they signed new deals. Are the Seahawks going to give Adams a $19 million AAV? pic.twitter.com/eQTMHTQpKP
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) July 11, 2021
When the Bears traded their 2019 and 2020 first-round picks to the Raiders for edge-rusher Khalil Mack in 2018, they had already started work on a six-year, $141 million contract extension with $90 million in total guarantees over the life of the deal. After the Texans traded two first-round picks, plus a second-round pick, to the Dolphins for left tackle Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills, Houston signed Tunsil to a three-year, $66 million extension with $40 million fully guaranteed. And after the Rams traded two first-round picks to the Jaguars for Ramsey, they gave Ramsey a five-year, $100 million extension.
Whether Mack, Tunsil, and Ramsey have justified those contracts is a matter of subjective conjecture — Tunsil and Ramsey may have slightly better arguments than Mack — but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. When you trade that much capital away for one player, and he isn’t under club control beyond the next season, the team making that deal has no choice, the player and his representation knows it, and as a result, the player and his representation has his team over the proverbial barrel.
“It’s been ongoing and it’s been amicable throughout,” Carroll said in June about Adams’ contract situation. “We recognize that he’s a fantastic football player and we’re in the midst of… it’s a big contract process. I know he knows he’s been treated with a lot of respect and he’s been very respectful towards the club, as well. There’s been good talks, just hasn’t been able to get settled at this point. It’s coming. We expect him for camp and everything should be fine.”
Denver’s Justin Simmons currently leads all safeties with the four-year, $61 million extension he signed in March. It took franchise tags in 2020 and 2021 to keep Simmons on the roster before that deal happened — the deal that makes Simmons the league’s richest player at his position from an average total dollars per year perspective. Simmons also has the most guaranteed money in his current contract at $32.1 million. Arizona’s Budda Baker ranks second in AAV among safeties at $14.750 million, and then, it’s Chicago’s Eddie Jackson ($14.6 million AAV), Tennessee’s Kevin Byard ($14.1 million), and Kansas City’s Tyrann Mathieu ($14 million). Mathieu is in line for his own monster extension, as he would be an unrestricted free agent after the 2021 season otherwise, and it’s hard to imagine the Chiefs letting that happen under any circumstances.
But even Mathieu, as great as he has become, doesn’t have the leverage Jamal Adams does. Whether the Seahawks were right or not to do so, they gave too much away for Adams to do anything but make him the NFL’s highest-paid safety — and if precedent tells the future story, Adams will lead the pack quite comfortably when that new contract comes together.