The Seattle Seahawks and the rest of the NFL got good news last week when the league announced a higher-than-expected salary cap for 2024. In an interview with PFT Live, general manager John Schneider said he was anticipating a cap of $249 million before the spending limit was set at $255.4 million per team.
Between that pleasant surprise and Seattle's recent restructure of quarterback Geno Smith's contract, Over The Cap lists the Seahawks with around $12 million in cap space. That's the 11th-lowest amount in the NFL, per OTC as of Friday, though more restructures and/or subtractions are likely to come ahead of the March 13 start of free agency.
Could one of those moves involve Jamal Adams?
The former Pro Bowl safety is set to make a nonguaranteed $16.5 million in 2024 and count a whopping $26.9 million against the salary cap, untenable amounts for a player who has been unable to stay on the field or get to the quarterback since his stellar Seattle debut in 2020.
Between three straight injury-shortened seasons, zero sacks in that span and the unwieldy price tag, it seems as though Adams' days in Seattle may be numbered.
Schneider, speaking to reporters at the scouting combine last week, did nothing to quell speculation when asked whether Adams fits into new coach Mike Macdonald's defensive plans.
"Is he in his plans?" Schneider said, according to The Seattle Times. "Yeah, I mean, we'll find out. We'll keep working through things. ... We're still trying to figure all that out."
Schneider gave a similarly noncommittal response on Smith while saying that Seattle's scouting department will reconvene with Macdonald and the rest of the coaches this week to begin sorting out the roster. That's been on hold since they didn't hire Macdonald until Jan. 31 then had to immediately get to work on building his staff, which wasn't finished until a few days before the combine.
It shouldn't take much discussion between the GM and coach to conclude there's virtually no way to justify keeping Adams, 28, at his current costs. Moving on would be a difficult pill to swallow for an organization that parted with two first-round picks (and then some) to acquire Adams from the New York Jets in 2020 -- one of the biggest swings of the Schneider/Pete Carroll era -- and then made him the NFL's highest-paid safety a year later with a four-year, $70 million extension.
But they might have to.
Releasing Adams would absolve the Seahawks of his $16.5 million base salary and the $17.5 million (also non-guaranteed) he's scheduled to make in 2025, the final year of his deal. If they did so via a standard release, they'd save $7.3 million against the 2024 cap while taking on $19.6 million in dead money right away.
If they designated Adams a post-June 1 release, which would require them to wait until the start of free agency, they could push half of that $19.6 million in dead money into 2025, which would result in a savings of $17.1 million against the '24 cap.
The caveat is that they'd have to carry the entire cap charge on their books until June 2, meaning that designating Adams as a post-June 1 release would free up $16.5 million in cash right away but it wouldn't free up any cap space to use during the initial phases of free agency.
A simple contract restructure in which money is merely moved around for cap purposes -- as the Seahawks did with Smith -- would lower Adams' cap number but wouldn't do anything about the $16.5 million base salary. Lowering that amount while still keeping Adams in the fold would require a pay-cut, which is always a tricky proposition.
The Seahawks could theoretically make Adams an offer in line with what they think he'd get on the open market, and any proposed pay-cut could be sweetened with guaranteed money he isn't currently slated to make.
Another option: punting on the Adams decision for now and revisiting it in the summer, when the Seahawks have had a chance to see how he's progressing physically after slogging his way through 2023 with a surgically-repaired quadriceps tendon above his left knee. This will be the first offseason since 2020 in which he won't be rehabbing from a major injury. But even if the Seahawks went that route, they'd still have to do something about Adams' contract, as bloated as it is relative to his recent production.
Since he made his third straight Pro Bowl in 2020 and set a record for defensive backs with 9.5 sacks in 12 games that year, Adams has been a shell of his former self. Including playoffs, he's missed 30 of a possible 52 games since then, finishing all three seasons on injured reserve.
In 2021, it was because of a re-torn left shoulder labrum, an injury he played through the year before. Adams tore his left quad tendon in the first half of the 2022 opener, a devastating injury that sidelined him through the first three games of last season and slowed him throughout the year until he was shut down in December.
There was also the concussion that cut short Adams' season debut in Week 4 and led to an outburst against the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant who had evaluated him. Adams apologized for that incident then had another run-in with a UNC two weeks later, which resulted in a $50,000 fine. In December, after allowing the go-ahead touchdown in a loss to the Dallas Cowboys, he disparaged the wife of an NFL reporter who had posted a clip of the play to X, later doubling down on his reasoning for firing back.
On the field he played nine games totaling seven tackles for loss, two QB hits and zero sacks -- his third straight season without bringing down an opposing quarterback.
"It was a rough year for him,'' Schneider told reporters at the combine, per The Seattle Times. "... I'm sure Jamal would tell you guys it was hard for him. He fought his tail off to get back. He was constantly trying to be out there, trying to be active and working with the coaching staff, working with the trainers, strength and conditioning guys.
"I would expect him to be much healthier next year, yes."
The question is whether that's in Seattle or elsewhere.