In the brief seconds it took for everyone to hit “send” on their messages Tuesday morning stating that the Seahawks had cut Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs, safety became one of the biggest positions of need entering the free agent signing period next week.
It wasn’t necessarily a surprise that they cut either player given their age, contract status and, in Adams’ specific case, injury history.
Still, not everyone was convinced the Seahawks would release both players at once and cut ties with a duo the team once hoped could revive memories of the Earl Thomas-Kam Chancellor glory days.
There were a few moments when it did look that way, notably in 2020 when Adams set an NFL record for sacks by a defensive back with 9.5 and Diggs picked off a career-high five passes.
Even in that season, Adams missed four games because of injury.
He would miss 29 more over the next three seasons as the defense fell from 15th in points allowed in 2020 to 25th each of the last two years.
Even before the post-mortems on the Adams trade could be written Tuesday — none of which can conclude anything other than that it was an admirable swing that turned into an inglorious miss — the question of “what now?” began to ring out in earnest.
That’s a question without a great answer just yet.
The Seahawks have just five players listed as safeties on the roster — Julian Love, Coby Bryant, Jerrick Reed II, Ty Okada and Jonathan Sutherland.
Love will almost certainly be considered as an anchor of the secondary after flashing enough as a part-time starter last year that he made the Pro Bowl.
Of the other four, only Bryant has any real experience — and almost all of that came in 2022 as a nickel cornerback before he was moved last year to primarily safety. Bryant battled a toe injury last season and played in just nine games. Via Pro Football Focus, he played only one snap at free safety, the rest at nickel or in the box.
Reed was a sixth-round pick in 2023 who played in 10 games but only 29 snaps on defense, all in garbage time of blowouts.
Okada, an undrafted rookie free agent last season, spent most of the year on the practice squad but was signed to the active roster late in the year and played in five games, solely on special teams.
Sutherland, also a rookie undrafted free agent last year, spent most of the season on the practice squad and was never active for a game. He was signed to a futures contract after the season. Sutherland was an early training-camp standout before a calf injury waylaid things and he was waived with an injury settlement at the cutdown to 53 before being brought back later.
Love can play free and strong safety, and that versatility should allow the Seahawks some flexibility in how they fill the position.
Love has one year left on the two-year, $12 million contract he signed a year ago. That deal includes an $8.09 million cap hit for 2024, and they could look to extend Love and bring down that cap hit.
The Seahawks surely like the potential of all of the young players, especially Bryant, who thrived as the nickel in 2022 when he forced four fumbles. Devon Witherspoon took over that role a year ago and could keep it, though it’s unclear if Macdonald will want to continue Witherspoon’s dual role last year of serving as a starting corner in the base defense and the nickel in five- and six-defensive back sets.
The good news for the Seahawks is there is no shortage of available veteran options. Diggs and Adams became only the latest veteran safeties to be cut in recent days.
Jacksonville released veteran Rayshawn Jenkins on Tuesday and, among other vets, recently released are Chicago’s Eddie Jackson, Detroit’s Tracy Walker and Kevin Byard of the Eagles.
There are several others due to hit free agency on March 13, such as Washington’s Kamren Curl, New York Giant Xavier McKinney and maybe the most obvious potential option of all, Geno Stone, a four-year vet with the Ravens. He started seven games for Baltimore a year ago and played in all 34 over the last two seasons with Macdonald as the team’s defensive coordinator.
Pro Football Focus assessed the 24-year-old Stone’s value as a two-year contract for $13 million.
Wrote PFF in its scouring report of Stone: “In his first season playing in a full-time role on a defense that deploys three-safety looks as much as any team in the NFL, Stone boasted an 84.9 PFF coverage grade in the regular season that ranked seventh at the position and brought in a position leading seven interceptions. The knocks on Stone will be about his lack of deployment in the box or the slot and his poor run defense and tackling, missing 19% of tackle opportunities this season.”
A few other safeties expected to hit free agency include Julian Blackmon of Indianapolis, Jordan Fuller of the Rams, Jordan Whitehead of the Jets, C.J. Gardner-Johnson of the Lions and former UW standout Taylor Rapp, who spent last season with the Buffalo Bills.
The domino effect of so many big-name safeties becoming available is that the price tag for all of them could go down a bit.
There’s obviously the draft, though this isn’t considered a great year for safeties, with none considered as a consensus to go in the first round.
The latest listing of the top-50 prospects from NFL draft expert Daniel Jeremiah didn’t include a safety, unless you count Iowa’s Cooper DeJean, a cornerback many think could be moved to safety. DeJean was ranked 31st.
The first safety on PFF’s draft Big Board is Minnesota’s Tyler Nubin at 25. Next is Georgia’s Javon Bullard at 50 and Washington State’s Jaden Hicks at 52, with no others until Miami’s Kamren Kinchens at 84.
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