RENTON, Wash. — Confirming the worst fears the moment the injury happened Monday night, Seahawks safety Jamal Adams is expected to miss the rest of the season after suffering a knee/quad injury in Seattle’s 17-16 win over Denver that will require surgery.
The Seahawks officially placed Adams on injured reserve Thursday afternoon after it was revealed he would have surgery soon to repair a torn quad tendon, which is expected to sideline him for the rest of the season. The exact details of when and where he will have surgery are still being sorted out.
Adams was injured early in the second quarter on a play when he blitzed Russell Wilson.
Adams was looked at in the medical tent before being carted off the sideline, and coach Pete Carroll after the game called it a “serious injury.”
Carroll said Wednesday that Adams was still exploring treatment options and the team had not yet put him on injured reserve.
However, the decision has been made to put him on IR, and with the open spot on the roster the Seahawks signed veteran defensive back Teez Tabor, who began his career as a cornerback but most recently has been a safety, off the practice squad of the Atlanta Falcons to take his place on the 53-man roster.
Tabor 26, was a second-round pick of the Lions in 2017 and is a veteran of 28 games with the Lions and Bears. He played in six games last year with the Bears when new Seahawks associate head coach for defense Sean Desai was the team’s defensive coordinator.
The news means that Adams, 26, will have played just 25 games in his first three seasons with the Seahawks after being acquired in July 2020 in a blockbuster deal with the New York Jets in which Seattle dealt its first-round picks in 2021 and 2022.
Adams, who missed just two games in three years with the Jets before coming to Seattle, has had nothing but bad luck with injuries as a Seahawk.
He played 12 games each of the last two years due to injuries, including a shoulder injury a year ago that required offseason surgery and caused him to miss the last five games of the season. Adams also dealt with a groin injury that cost him four games in 2020 and also had surgery to fuse the middle and ring fingers on his left hand this offseason after he dislocated each multiple times over the last few years.
Adams signed a four-year contract extension that runs through 2025 in August of 2021 that can pay him up to $72 million overall.
Adams made three tackles and had a quarterback hit and a pass defense in 15 snaps in Monday’s game before he was injured with the team hoping to use him substantially this season in three-safety packages in which he would often line up as essentially a linebacker. That was how he was used on the play in which he was injured.
The Seahawks will now use Josh Jones as the other starting safety alongside Quandre Diggs with veteran Ryan Neal expected to see more playing time in specialty packages.
“It hurts because the guy is a great football player,” defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt said Wednesday of Adams. “I’ve said that before. It is definitely a shot, we don’t have a lot of guys like that, but we have so much confidence in Josh and Ryan and their ability. Ryan obviously proved to us last year that he can come out there to help us and do things. Josh has shown that too. It sucks, I hate it for Jamal, but at the same time for these guys, they can take advantage of the opportunity, and they have showed that they can do that.”
While Adams’ contract runs through 2025, he has little guaranteed money left. The only guarantee remaining, according to OvertheCap.com, is $2.56 million of his $11 million base salary for 2023 if he is on the roster as of Feb. 4, 2023.
Adams’ contract carries increasingly large cap hits over the next few years — $9.1 million in 2022, $18.1 million in 2023, $23.6 million in 2024 and $24.6 million in 2025.
Adams’ contract, which at the time made him the highest-paid safety in NFL history, included a $21 million signing bonus. He has now fallen to third among NFL safeties in average salary.
Adams set an NFL record for defensive backs with 9.5 sacks in 2020 (since sacks became an official stat in 1982) and was named to the Pro Bowl and to the AP All-Pro second team.
Tabor now adds a fifth safety to Seattle’s roster along with Diggs, Jones, Neal and underrated rookie free agent Joey Blount. Tabor began his career as a cornerback but was moved to safety by the Bears last season.
Tabor played 65 snaps at free safety for the Falcons in the preseason, according to Pro Football Focus, making 12 tackles. He played 87 snaps at free safety last year for the Bears, according to PFF.
