Why Jamal Adams vs. Cam Newton is the matchup to watch in Week 2

If Tyrann Mathieu is the Honey Badger (and he most certainly is), it could be said that the Seahawks iteration of safety/slot defender/blitzer/chaos creator Jamal Adams might be the Wolverine.

Wikipedia defines the wolverine (the animal) as having “a reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times larger than itself.” It defines Wolverine (the Marvel Comics character) as “a mutant who possesses animal-keen senses, enhanced physical capabilities, a powerful regenerative ability known as a healing factor, and three retractable claws in each hand.”

Against the Falcons in Week 1, Adams displayed nearly every one of these qualities, and if he shows up in Seattle on Sunday night with three retractable claws in each hand, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Though Jets defensive coordinator Gregg Williams posited in August that Adams might be “bored” in Pete Carroll’s defense after the Seahawks sent two first-round picks and safety Bradley McDougald for Adams in July, the truth was that the stuff Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton showed in Seattle’s 38-25 win was very different than the usual single-high base with the occasional man coverage and blitz packages. Last season, the Seahawks blitzed on 26.9% of their defensive snaps. On Sunday, that percentage ticked up to 33.9%, Adams was the difference, and you shouldn’t be surprised if that percentage rises still more as the season progresses.

The Seahawks put Adams all over the field against Atlanta, and he responded magnificently. He recorded eight solo tackles, two tackles for loss, six stops, four pressures, a sack, and one reception allowed on two targets for zero air yards and four yards after the catch. All this while playing 33 snaps at free safety, 25 at box safety, 11 on the defensive line, and 10 in the slot.

Of course, when you’re facing Adams, it’s less about where he’s aligned and more about how difficult his quickness and positional versatility makes it for opposing quarterbacks to read exactly what he’s doing.

The Polamalu comparison has been made before — by Carroll after the Adams trade,

“Troy was really an unusual body for the kind of athlete and player that he was,” Carroll said in August. “It’s the nature that they play with that’s similar. They play with such an amazing confidence. They go get things, and with their savvy that makes them so extraordinarily different than other players, they can see things before they happen.”

Former Bengals and current Cowboys quarterback Andy Dalton said many of the same things in 2019.

“With Troy, Troy was so smart and understood exactly what they were doing on defense and how obviously they were trying to attack. Jamal, he is similar. He can start down, run down to the half. He can do all the different things that Troy did.”

The Falcons presented their own specific challenges, mostly in the passing game. But Seattle’s Week 2 opponent, who they welcome to the Emerald City on Sunday night, is the new-look New England Patriots and their wildly expanded run game thanks to Cam Newton at quarterback.

Last Sunday against the Dolphins, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels called a ton of designed runs in all kinds of different looks in a 21-11 win. Newton ran 15 times for 75 yards and two touchdowns. He ran the very same counter option play the Patriots ran in 2016 with backup quarterback Jacoby Brissett for one of his touchdowns. He ran toss-crack for his other touchdown. Over at Football Outsiders, former Stanford offensive lineman Ben Muth has an outstanding breakdown of the variance of New England’s run schemes in Week 1 — it really was quite the Valu-Pak.

(David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports)

That said, Belichick is very aware of what the Seahawks, and specifically Adams, could do to all that fancy stuff.

“I’d say they ran certainly more safety blitzes than – maybe more in that game than I’d seen in the previous year,” Belichick said on Thursday. “That hasn’t really been a big part of Coach Carroll’s defense, but he did it in a way that it was consistent with the philosophy of what they do defensively. So, it was a change and a significant one with how disruptive Adams was on those blitzes. It’s always hard to tell with a player like Adams which ones are called and what’s him just reacting to something and coming in very aggressively, especially on running plays. But, in any case, I think they modified their system a little bit to take advantage of a very explosive and disruptive player, which is really just smart coaching and good utilization of personnel.

“I know Pete’s philosophy is always to play into his strengths, and he does a great job of that, and clearly Jamal Adams is one of their strengths. So, they did something a little bit differently with him than what they’ve done in the past in terms of inserting him into the pressure part of their defense, but I’d say within the overall context of what they have done fundamentally for quite a long time. It’s not like they’re redesigning everything but they’re using one of their outstanding players in a very good way, and that causes problems for the offense. So, that’s kind of what I saw last week. We’ll see how it goes this week, but that’s what it appeared to be last week against Atlanta.”

Two of Adams’ plays are worth noting, specially when it comes to defending the run. This was a five-yard gain for Todd Gurley in Week 1, but the way in which Adams crossed the formation and prevented it from being a far bigger play is fairly ridiculous.

And on this one-yard Gurley red zone run, watch how Adams initially takes the motion man (tight end Luke Stocker) across, reads run, and crashes in out of nowhere to create more anarchy Coming from the second level as he does, you’d think he’d be guarding one of the two tight ends to the strong (left) side. But this is a chaos defender, and chaos defenders do not follow the traditional rules of the position.

Again, the most remarkable aspect of this play is how quickly Adams gets to his target from a position where the quarterback would probably reading his involvement in coverage, Cam Newton is a very smart quarterback — much more intelligent than he’s generally given credit before — but you can imagine him taking extra film reps this week to try and figure out just what the heck Adams will be up to when he wants to take the ball and run.

Given Belichick’s tendency to game-plan for every specific opponent, this might mean that the Patriots will try to keep Adams off-balance with more passing plays, more counter motion, and more misdirection.

After all, when he’s in two-high coverage, you can run a crosser to the other side, right? No way he’s gonna get there…

Oh. Sorry, Julio Jones. And in case you haven’t checked New England’s roster lately, ain’t no Julio Joneses on there.

Well. Maybe you can run screens to challenge Adams to the edge?

Nope. Remember this play from earlier in the article? That right there is a zero-yard blowup.

This is why the matchup between the Patriots and Jamal Adams is the most compelling of Week 2. You have an offense that is ready to unleash all kinds of new, fresh hell with a quarterback the likes of which Bill Belichick’s never had, going up against a defensive player for whom you can’t really prepare on a snap-to-snap basis.

Sunday night, as the kids say these days, should be lit.