Quandre Diggs throws shade at Seahawks staff for Jamal Adams scheme

A former Seahawks safety threw a little shade at his former coaching staff when asked about reuniting with Jamal Adams on the Titans. This wasn't the rant of a bitter former player; it was simply the truth we all saw.

In one of the stranger twists of the 2024 offseason, the starting safeties of the 2023 Seattle Seahawks have been reunited on the Tennessee Titans. Both Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams were released for financial reasons more than their on-field results. Moving on from Diggs saved the Hawks $11 million on the cap while sending Adams on his way saved $6 million on the cap, plus another $10 million in cash.

Diggs handled his release from Seattle with a lot of class, and more than a touch of humor. There were always rumors that he could return to Seattle at a lower deal, but he quickly quashed that idea as something that would never happen. We'll get to the details of that, but Diggs had a few far more interesting comments about his former and once again current teammate, Jamal Adams.

Seattle Seahawks coaches blew it with Adams as far as Quandre Diggs is concerned

As detailed by The Seattle Times Bob Condotta, Diggs was pretty emphatic about the chances of him returning to the Hawks: "I don’t think that was ever in the cards. I’m more of a guy, you fire me, that’s it, you know what I mean? So you can say what you want to say [about him potentially returning], but I ain’t going back.” So while John Schneider and Mike Macdonald may have been happy to see him return, we have a pretty clear answer as to why those mild rumors never amounted to anything.

Now comes the juicy part of the story. Or as I like to see it, the damning evidence of the Seahawks' misuse of Jamal Adams. All 12s know how spectacular Adams was in his first season in Seattle. He set the all-time NFL record for sacks by a safety, with 9.5. He'd had 6.5 the year before with the Jets, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. He wasn't exactly great in coverage in 2020 though, as he had a passer rating allowed of 104.7. That's not good.

How not good is it? As a point of reference, the average passer rating for QBs last year was 89.0. So every QB that targeted Adams in 2020 performed like a top-five player. Last season, Julian Love's passer rating against was 82.2. The difference between Adams and Love is like facing Lamar Jackson for 17 games, or Kenny Pickett. I think you know the right answer there.

So, instead of maximizing what Adams did best in 2020 - play in the box, blitz, disrupt the running game, and create sacks - in 2021, the Seahawks coaching staff played Adams at two-high safety much more often. Oh, did I mention Adams had 11 tackles for a loss in his first season with the Hawks? Sorry, slipped my mind, just as it apparently did for Ken Norton Jr. So instead of continuing to make the best use of Adams' skill set, the Hawks minimized it.

He went from 98 blitzes in 2020 to just 44 in 2021. Surprise, surprise, his sacks dropped to zero, his tackles for a loss to four. True, the sacks shouldn't have completely disappeared, but when your reduce the opportunity by more than fifty percent, you're going to see a drop in performance. His passer rating against improved, but it was still bad at 93.8.

And last season was atrocious, as it hit 111.7. Remember, Julian Love too over and managed a rating more than 29 points lower. That the equivalent of facing Patrick Mahomes (career 103.5) or Zach Wilson (career 73.2).

And that is exactly the issue that Quandre Diggs pinpointed. You remember, we started off talking about Diggs?

In the same article from Mr. Condotta, Diggs had this to say about how the Hawks used his friend Jamal: “Man, I’m telling you, it’s different,” he said when asked how Adams is adjusting in Tennessee. “He’s back to who he is. He’s having fun. He’s with Dennard again and I think this is the happiest I’ve seen him probably since 2020 when we blitzed and just let him be himself, let him be close to the line, blitz, do those things — TFLs [tackles for loss], sacks, all that stuff. Dennard knows how to use him. It’s dope to see.”

Dennard is Dennard Wilson, the Titans' defensive coordinator and the Jets defensive backfield coach for all three years of Adams' time in New York. So yes, you could expect the Titans to know how to use him. What's sad is that the Seahawks knew how to use him too, then forgot. When asked why Seattle made that decision, Diggs said that a lot of teams adopted the two-high scheme and the Hawks followed the trend.

Ironically enough, it looks like Adams will be deployed largely as a hybrid nickel/linebacker by the Titans. This is exactly what John Schneider had said the Seahawks intended to do if they brought Adams back. Not so ironically, Adams has missed all but a few plays of the joint practices in Nashville. He's being held out for what their head coach Brain Callahan called "overall soreness". Sounds familiar, doesn't it, 12s?

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