The Seahawks made the trade of the offseason to get Jamal Adams. Now they have one of the best Safety groups in the NFL. So, let’s meet the newcomer, and breakdown the four returning Seahawks.
After Saturday’s cut day, the Seahawks are now down to 53 total players on their active roster for Week 1 of the 2020 season, including 5 safeties. The only contract casualty was the undrafted free agent signing Chris Miller of Baylor.
The Seahawks safety group is certainly going to be one of, if not the strongest group for the Seahawks this season. In fact, they might even be the strongest safety group in the league. This is of course because of the biggest trade of the NFL offseason when the Seahawks acquired All-Pro safety, Jamal Adams, from the jets.
But the talent does not stop at Adams. Another man who made his way to Seattle via trade, Quandre Diggs, returns for his second season with the Seahawks. Behind them on the depth chart are the young and talented Lano Hill, Marquise Blair, and Ugo Amadi.
Add this group to Shaquill Griffin, Quinton Dunbar, and Tre Flowers, and the Seahawks have one of the best secondaries in the NFL. There has been some mention of “L.O.B. 2.0” on twitter, however, I would not go that far. I have been giving my predictions for who will start and who will be cut all summer, but as we have made it passed cut day, I will at least still break down every safety still on the Seahawks roster.
First, the brand new superstar.
Jamal Adams
Age: 24
Contract: 4 years $22,258,808 (Final year with 2021 5th year option)
2019 Stats: 1 INT, 7 passes defended, 2 forced fumbles, 2 TD’s, 6.5 sacks, 10 TFL, 13 QB hits.
This offseason saw Tom Brady and DeAndre Hopkins switch teams. Yet, somehow Jamal Adams might have been the best player to move. The fourth-year safety out of “DBU” LSU has turned himself into one of the best safeties in the NFL and earned First-Team All-Pro honors for his insanely good 2019.
If the stats listed above weren’t good enough for you, how about Adams’s incredible PFF grades for his second and third year in the NFL, with an 87.9 in 2019, and an 89.8 in 2018. His 2019 grade was good enough to rank him second in the NFL for safeties.
Adams is a great player and will be for many years, but will he be in Seattle longterm? The Seahawks gave up an arm and a leg to acquire Adams from the Jets, trading two first-round picks (2021, 2022), a third-round pick (2021), and Bradley McDougald. Surely with the gargantuan amount of assets the Seahawks gave up, they will entertain an extension for Adams. Adams is in the final year of his rookie contract but has a fifth-year option for next season since he was a first-round pick.
Seahawks veterans
Quandre Diggs
Age: 27
Contract: 3 years $18.6 million (2nd year)
2019 Stats: 3 INT’s, 1 TD, 3 passes defended, 1 forced fumble
I want to start off the Diggs section with my favorite factoid that you could never guess. Diggs has never played a game wearing a blue Seahawks jersey. Six of Diggs’s seven games last season were on the road and his only home game saw the team wearing their color rush jerseys. So barring injury, that will change this season.
For the football side of things, Diggs was excellent when he played last season. He looks to be well worth the small price of a 2020 fifth-round pick sent to his former team the Detroit Lions. He had a great PFF grade of 76.4 for 2019. The key for Diggs in 2020 will be his health, as he only played 5 games for the Seahawks last season plus two playoff games. He missed 6 games between Detroit and Seattle in 2019, with three separate trips to the injury report.
Lano Hill
Age: 24
Contract: 4 years $3,206,726 (Final year)
2019 Stats: 25 tackles
Through Hill’s three years with the Seahawks, he has been a serviceable backup safety. He started four games last year as an injury replacement early and late in the season and did not do much with the opportunities.
His career snap counts are near identical between defense and special teams, as the punt unit is where he has found a lot of playing time when the safeties ahead of him on the depth chart are healthy. With all of this young talent on the team in the final year of his rookie contract, expect Hill to mainly see playing time on special teams.
The young Seahawks
Ugo Amadi
Age: 23
Contract: 4 years $3,165,196 (2nd year)
2019 Stats: 1 fumble recovery, 17 tackles
In his rookie season last year, Ugo had a stereotypical rookie season, playing a few snaps on offense mainly as an injury replacement, but the majority of his time was spent on special teams. Ugo found a role on the punt team as a gunner due to his insane speed, and also found a role as the backup nickel corner. Going into 2020 he could be the primary nickel corner this year but there has not been much news on who will win the job.
Marquise Blair
Age: 23
Contract: 4 years $6,236,648 (2nd year)
2019 Stats: 1 pass defended, 2 forced fumbles, 32 tackles
Blair had a very similar 2019 to the previously mentioned Amadi. The majority of his playtime was on defense, starting 3 games and playing 22% of defensive snaps, but he played nearly half of the Seahawks special teams snaps. While Amadi might be a guy who’s main role in his career is special teams, the Seahawks hope that Blair will show his second-round pick potential at some point and become more of a regular on the defense.
He might get his chance this year as the Seahawks nickel corner as he has been battling with Amadi for that role during camp. With the addition of Adams, Blair’s playtime will certainly shrink compared to what if would’ve been behind Bradley McDougald, but he will still get plenty of opportunities this year.
Who Starts?
Pretty simple: Adams and Diggs. However, when you add the nickel corner position to the mix of defensive backs it gets a little bit more interesting. During training camp, the competition was between Amadi and Blair, but with the addition of Adams, and with the Seahawks not allowing media to tweet out lineups and depth charts towards the end of camp, things could change.
Adams is known for moving around a lot between being at the line of scrimmage, a traditional safety spot, even outside as a corner. But in the last two seasons, Adams has played 14.5% of his snaps as the Jets slot corner.
There’s also the possibility that against two tight end sets the Seahawks could put a big guy like Tre Flowers against one of the tight ends. Quinton Dunbar also has experience as the slot corner.
So if the Seahawks D has an extra DB every few snaps like last year, there could be an opportunity for Amadi or Blair to get on the field regularly whether it is as the nickel corner, or replacing Adams at safety as he moves up to the line to play the nickel.