Seattle Seahawks safety Jamal Adams defended himself Thursday amid criticism of his decision to post an insult about a reporter’s wife on social media.
Even as Seahawks coach Pete Carroll expressed disapproval, Adams took umbrage with the idea that he had crossed a line with the now-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Oh, it’s always the athlete crossed the line when he responds,” Adams said Wednesday. “But at the end of the day, disrespect is disrespect. However you want to take it. So I responded. I knew when I did hit that tweet, I wasn’t in it to win it. At the end of the day, it was to get him to understand to leave me the hell alone.”
Adams allowed the game-winning touchdown pass in Seattle’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys last Thursday. A New York-based reporter who had covered Adams’ tenure with the Jets quoted a video of the play and wrote, “Yikes.”
Adams responded by posting a picture of the reporter with his wife, writing, “Yikes.”
The seventh-year pro drew blowback for the move before he deleted the post. Adams’ boss was among those who objected.
“I don’t know if it was a great decision at the time,” Carroll said. “I’m not sure about the details of it, but I know that he realized that he needed to take it down — what he had put up. We don’t want to be a part of that.”
Adams, 28, was the sixth overall draft pick by the Jets in 2017. He was a Pro Bowl selection in 2018 and 2019 before being traded to Seattle in the summer of 2020.
“It’s been personal with him and I ever since I’ve been with the Jets,” Adams said. “… I just got fed up with it, bro. It was just the end of it, and I knew this only thing right here that I was going to tweet was going to hurt him. Anything else I would have said wouldn’t have hurt him, but he got my point and he knows not to continue to mess with me.”
“I hate that I had to bring her into the situation, but at the end of the day, the ultimate goal was to get at him.”
Adams has played in just nine games the past two seasons due to a torn quad that prematurely ended his 2022 season in Week 1. He has 490 tackles, 21.5 sacks and four interceptions in 79 career games (all starts).
Adams also pushed back at a second Jets reporter who called him a “bad guy” on X in response to Adams’ initial post.
“He’s another one,” Adams said. “Do not like. … At the end of the day, hey, you responded to something that was not a part of y’all’s team and you obviously had something personal versus me. So, hey, when others go low, I went lower.”
–Field Level Media