Seahawks begin OTAs without Jamal Adams, Jordyn Brooks. Team not sure when they’ll return

The Kraken’s glorious hockey playoff run just ended. The Mariners are barely a quarter of the way into baseball season. The Storm have yet to begin their summer basketball schedule.

Yet the Seahawks already are entering the final phase of their offseason workouts.

Jamal Adams and Jordyn Brooks won’t be there for them.

Coach Pete Carroll said when the Seahawks begin organized team activities practices (OTAs) Monday at team headquarters in Renton, Adams and Brooks will remain away in Texas. That’s where they are rehabilitating from major injuries.

Adams, the Seahawks’ $70 million safety, is near his offseason home grinding back from a torn quadriceps tendon and injured knee. He got those blitzing Russell Wilson last September in Seattle’s opening-game win over Denver.

Brooks, the team’s linebacker who set a record for tackles two seasons ago, injured the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee Jan. 1 during Seattle’s win over the New York Jets.

Carroll said last weekend the Seahawks had just received positive results on latest medical tests for Adams and Brooks. They are two of the few proven players in the middle of a defense Carroll is overhauling for 2023.

“They’re doing well. They’re making good progress and they’ll be in here in a while,” Carroll said during Seahawks rookie minicamp at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center.

“There’s no rush for them to be here because they can’t do the work yet. And they’re in really good set-ups where they are. So, they’re both staying pretty connected out there.”

Monday, Adams posted on his social-media accounts videos of him running on a treadmill, with a reference to “being slept on” by doubters.

His message concluded with: “Keep working.”

Will that work get Adams on the field by the start of Seahawks training camp the last week of July?

Seahawks general manager John Schneider talked about Adams on The Rich Eisen Show last week.

“The company answer is that we don’t know exactly (the) timeline,” Schneider said. “He’s gotta keep progressing here.”

The GM called Adams’ quad-tendon tear a “very bad injury.”

“Very unfortunate for Jamal, for our team last year, really,” Schneider said on Eisen’s show. “He was crushing it in the first half of that Denver game last year. You could see the intensity and you could see the difference-maker that he truly is early in that game. We really missed him throughout the season.

“He’s working his tail off. We want to be really careful with this. It’s been two years in a row now that he’s been banged up. ...We want to be really careful with his progression.

“Training camp? I’m just not sure.”

In March the Seahawks signed former New York Giants safety Julian Love to a two-year contract worth up to $12 million. Love, a Giants captain last season, has played as a deep safety in coverage, a strong safety against the run and a nickel defensive back inside against slot receivers when New York went to a fifth defensive back.

If Adams proves healthy to begin the 2023 season, Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt want him back being the pressing, blitzing defender more like a linebacker near the line of scrimmage he was in 2020. That was when he set an NFL record for sacks by a defensive back for Seattle. Love would thus be back as a deeper safety with Pro Bowl veteran Quandre Diggs. The Seahawks would play more three-safety defenses than they ever have.

Playing three safeties as a base defense would lessen the impact of Brooks possibly still being out at linebacker. Seattle could play with three true linebackers: Bobby Wagner and Devin Bush inside with 2022 sack leader Uchenna Nwosu returning as a rush outside linebacker.

That’s the plan, anyway.

If Adams cannot return to playing by the season opener, Love is the insurance starter with Diggs. And the Seahawks will have to play more conventional, two-safety schemes, as Adams’ injury forced them to do last season.

Brooks had surgery in mid-January. The usual recovery time from ACL injuries and surgeries is nine to 12 months. That would be October, on the short side of that time frame.

The Seahawks’ season begins Sept. 10, in their opener at home against the Los Angeles Rams.

Since Brooks’ injury and the end of last season, Seattle has signed back Wagner (after the six-time All-Pro’s year away playing for the Rams) and signed Bush in free agency from Pittsburgh to be the new inside linebackers.

Last week on KJR radio Carroll said of Brooks’ and the start of Seattle’s training camp the last week of July: “We expect him to be really close at camp time.”

OTAs, veteran minicamp schedule

The OTA workouts on the field are Monday, Wednesday and Thursday next week, then May 30, June 1-2 and June 12-14. The players are usually in helmets, jerseys over no shoulder pads and shorts during OTAs.

From June 6-8 Seattle will have its annual veteran minicamp.

What ultimately makes Adams and Brooks not being with the team the next weeks no big deal: The OTAs are voluntary. Though they are strongly encouraged by coaches, teams can’t fine healthy players for unexcused absences.

And: It’s only May.

Diggs missed OTAs last spring after he broke his leg and dislocated his ankle in the finale to Seattle’s 2021 season four months earlier. He returned to get voted team captainm start all 18 games of last season and postseason, and earn another Pro Bowl selection.

The veteran mincamp is mandatory. Any player healthy enough to participate that does not risks team fines.

The NFL closely regulates what players can do in this third and final phase of offseason workouts. Article 21 of the league’s collective bargaining agreement with its players stipulates for OTAs and minicamps:

• “No live contact is permitted.”

• “No one-on-one offense vs. defense drills are permitted (i.e., no offensive linemen vs. defensive linemen pass rush or pass protection drills, no wide receivers vs. defensive backs bump-and-run drills, and no one-on-one special teams drills involving both offense and defense are permitted) except that, outside of the 10-yard line, simulated press coverage is permitted using hand placement (versus jamming) during 11-on-11 drills and related position group one-on-one drills (e.g., footwork and release work (no ‘live-contact’ or ‘bump-and-run’).”

• “During simulated press coverage drills, hand contact between a defensive player and a receiver is permitted provided the defensive player does not impede the receiver or alter his route and no live contact occurs.”