Seahawks counting on Jamal Adams’ return to improve the defense. But when will that be?

Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs sat next to each other on folding chairs. They were quietly talking, inside an even quieter locker room

It was Saturday at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, moments after the Seahawks’ season ended with a thud. A 41-23 runaway by the superior San Francisco 49ers further exposed Seattle’s defense.

Adams and Diggs could have been talking about what might have been.

Or what certainly wasn’t.

The Seahawks had planned to use Adams and Diggs in new, interchanging and versatile roles up and back and all around the defense this past season.

They played together just one half of one game. Adams tore his quadriceps tendon and injured his knee blitzing free into Russell Wilson in the second quarter of Seattle’s opening-game win over the Denver Broncos.

“For me, 33 just kind of amps me up a little bit. He just gets me going. When you see him flying around you say, ‘I’ve got to go match that,’” Diggs said as he was packing up his locker to head back to his home in Texas for the offseason.

Coach Pete Carroll, new defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt and new special defensive assistant Sean Desai planned to use Adams, a strong safety in title, closer to the line of scrimmage, as a blitzer, as almost a rover across the defense in 2022. He could have been essentially a linebacker against running plays.

It was to be more like he was in 2020 when he splashed in his Seattle debut season following his trade from the New York Jets that summer. He set an NFL record for defensive backs with 9-1/2 sacks in an aggressive, varied role that season.

In 2021, with Carroll fearful of his cornerbacks getting beaten on long passes, Adams had blitzed half as much and stayed back with Diggs in two-deep safety coverage far more than Carroll prefers.

So much for those 2022 plans.

Proven, trusted Ryan Neal would have been the instant replacement for Adams at strong safety. But he was also injured to begin this season. So Josh Jones started the next three games after Adams went out in September. Neal became the starting strong safety next to Diggs in Week 5, a shootout loss at New Orleans in which Seattle allowed 235 yards rushing.

Neal was stellar for a second consecutive season replacing the injured Adams with sure tackling, particularly on receivers short of the line to gain after catches on third downs. But Neal played the last month or so on a badly bruised and injured knee. He missed three games. Jones was on injured reserve by then. So Johnathan Abram and Teez Tabor, two midseason acquisitions off the discard piles of Green Bay and Atlanta, respectively, had to play their first Seahawks games at strong safety.

“It kind of threw guys in different positions and different things that they had to do,” Diggs said. “Even from a leadership standpoint, I had to take a bigger role, just from the fact that I don’t have 33 there to enforce things.

“When it’s an absence of a player of that caliber, you try not to show it during the season, but eventually it shows its head.”

Adams watched, from Texas and his rehabilitation, as Seattle’s defense without him spent much of the season as the worst run-stopping unit in franchise history. It finished 30th in the NFL in run defense, allowing more than 150 yards per game. San Francisco romped for 181 yards rushing and 505 total yards on Saturday in the NFC wild-card game.

“It did affect us, because we had a real plan in how we wanted to utilize him,” Carroll said Tuesday. “He’s a terrific ball player and he would be a big factor. That’s the design of the scheme. It was all set up with that in mind.

“I’m not blaming anything on that. We will take advantage of that when we have him again. He will make the most of it.”

But when will that be?

Jamal Adams’ long recovery

The Seahawks aren’t sure when Adams is going to be back this offseason. Or preseason, in the summer.

He’s been spending almost all this season rehabilitating from another season-ending surgery near his home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He had surgeries on a torn labrum in his shoulder and broken fingers last offseason.

He was back for training camp last summer from those issues.

This latest one may take longer.

“Jamal was with us here this weekend and he’s finally starting to move,” Carroll said. “He is up on his feet. He’s going. He’s on the treadmill, and he’s getting started.

“It’s still a long recovery for him. We will go into the summer with him still getting back. We have to wait and see how it goes. But that’s not one where he is going to bounce back and be ready next month or something like that.

“It’s going to take him a while.”

Fixing defense the priority

Carroll can say and has said, justifiably, Seattle’s offensive system can win the NFC West. Quarterback Geno Smith is the priority to re-sign after his Pro Bowl and record-setting season replacing the traded Wilson. Kenneth Walker didn’t start until October yet joined Curt Warner in 1983 as the only Seahawks rookies to rush for more than 1,000 yards. DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett were each 1,000-yard wide receivers.

It’s the defense the Seahawks must fix. They have four picks in the first 52 choices of April’s draft, plus the league’s third-most salary-cap space for 2023 (for now, until they re-sign Smith) to remake the defense’s from seven linemen and linebackers.

The secondary is the unit’s strength. Cornerback Tariq Woolen made the Pro Bowl as a rookie and likely will finish second to Jets cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner as NFL defensive rookie of the year. Diggs made his third consecutive Pro Bowl this season, after re-signing with Seattle. Carroll and the coaches liked Michael Jackson’s debut season starting at the cornerback opposite Woolen. Tre Brown will be fully back from knee surgery to complete with Jackson for that job.

And Adams still has three more seasons on a four-year, $70 million deal, a record for NFL safeties. He signed that in the summer of 2021.

The Seahawks believe Adams returning and staying healthy for an entire season for the first time since the team traded for him in 2020 will make the defense better with just that one development.

It couldn’t be a lot worse.

“For me, it would be a big boost,” Diggs said this week. “That’s one of my best friends, to have someone I can confide to when things aren’t going our way, to have somebody I can talk to. Just the energy, the passion, the level of play that he brings, it will be a big boost.

“Everybody in the locker room is ready for him to get back.”