Jets fans may not have much to be thankful for on this festive Thanksgiving Thursday, but one thing that should have the fans excited has been the continued development of safety Jamal Adams.
It shows up when you watch the games on television or in person. It shows up again if you take a look at the NFL’s all 22 film, and then again from sites such as Pro Football Focus who grade every single NFL player on every single play they’re a part of. Just over half way through his second pro season, the man who calls himself “The President”, is living up to not only the pre-draft hype, but his own.
Through ten games, Adams has shown a level of improvement that indicates not only his importance to the franchise moving forward, but his standing among his peers. While many of Adams’ highlight reel plays have come when lining up in the box and chasing down opposing backs, the fact of the matter is that he’s been stellar in pass coverage as well.
After allowing six touchdowns in coverage as a rookie last season, Adams has yet to give up a score in year two when lining up in coverage. In fact, according to PFF, Adams has dropped back in coverage on 364 snaps, being targeted only 29 times, allowing just 15 completions. Of those fifteen completions, 8 came in the season’s first four games, meaning Adams has allowed just 7 passes to be completed against him over the past six games.
His high-end coverage and outstanding play at and around the line of scrimmage (67 tackles, 8 tackles for loss) have Adams currently rated as the NFL’s 8th best safety with an overall grade of 80.6 according to PFF.
Oh, and about Adams’ ascent that we referred to earlier in showing up on the stat sheet? Here are some numbers we pulled from ProFootballFocus.com along with profootballreference.com, showing across the board improvement for Adams.
| G | Tck | TFL | Cov Snaps | Target | Comp | Comp pct | PD | INT | TD | Sacks | QB Pressures | |
| 2017 | 16 | 82 | 9 | 562 | 46 | 29 | 63% | 6 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 8 |
| 2018 | 10 | 67 | 8 | 364 | 29 | 15 | 51.70% | 9 | 1 | 0 | 1.5 | 13 |
If things keep trending the way they are for Adams, he should remain in the top spot this season, with many others to follow.Much of his success may be overlooked by some in what has been a terrible season of Jets football, but there are clearly plenty of others who have taken notice of Adams. While he is used as an enforcer at the line of scrimmage while also playing plenty of coverage, he’s listed as a strong safety by the folks at NFL.com who have him leading all others at the position in pro bowl voting with a total of 92,765 votes, putting him ahead of Washington’s HaHa Clinton-Dix and Landon Collins of the Giants.