Heaps: Why it was time for Jamal Adams to sign Seahawks’ extension

The saga of when and whether star safety Jamal Adams would agree to a contract extension with the Seahawks has come to an end, with the team officially announcing Tuesday afternoon that the two sides have agreed on a new four-year deal.

Seahawks, All-Pro safety Jamal Adams agree to four-year deal

While it may feel like negotiations between the two sides have gone on for a long while, the timing of the agreement actually still gives Adams plenty of time to get ready for the upcoming season. Though he’s sat out practices to this point in training camp, staging a “hold-in” until a deal was reached, the Seahawks still have two preseason games to go through and don’t begin the regular season for nearly another month (their opener is Sept. 12 at Indianapolis).

So why was now the right time for Adams to come to terms with Seattle? Former Seahawks quarterback Jake Heaps shared his thoughts on the matter Tuesday afternoon on 710 ESPN Seattle’s Jake and Stacy. Here’s a transcript of what Heaps had to say:

“Remember when we first showed up to training camp, I had said that everything that I was hearing in the building and around the building, there was a ton of confidence that the deal was actually going to get done in the first couple days. In the first week of training camp… (head coach) Pete Carroll, (general manager) John Schneider, they felt like they were in a really good spot to get that deal wrapped up and Jamal Adams kind of dug his heels in a little bit and said, ‘Hey, there are some aspects about this that I don’t like, that I want to see increased,’ and really tried to push the envelope over the last two weeks in terms of what him and his agent can get. And the Seahawks really held firm on, ‘Hey, this is our final offer in terms of average per year, in terms of the guaranteed money, this is where we’re at.’

“I think that when you’re Jamal Adams, overall you value practice time, you value the opportunity that you have with this team, within this organization. There was never any fracturing of relationships, so there wasn’t this need to make a ton of drama out of this leading up to the first game of the season. And once you felt like you got to the final point… and you got all that you can, and yet you still have enough time – you have multiple weeks of practice still before your first game – I think this was the time where Jamal Adams felt like it was right for him to stop trying to negotiate, settle in on a deal with the organization so that he can be out here with his teammates practicing. Get on the field, get the work in so that they can hit the ground running come Week 1.”

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