By this point, everyone in the NFL world knows about Jamal Adams’ feud with the Jets.
He wants to be paid like a top defensive player in the league or he wants to be traded. Lately, Adams appears more interested in being traded than extending with the Jets after a nine-month period of hostility between the two sides.
Adams isn’t the first high-profile player on the Jets to fight with the team over money, he’s just the most recent. The Jets have dealt with a couple of big standoffs over the past 20 years with varying results. Sometimes they trade away a disgruntled player and sometimes they come to a compromise.
It’s unclear what is going to happen with Adams just yet. So for now, let’s take a look at some of the other more notable contract disputes in Jets recent history.
Darrelle Revis
Revis actually engaged in two contract disputes with the Jets. After a tremendous 2009 season in which he finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting, Revis entered the 2010 offseason in the fourth year of his rookie contract. He was set to earn just $1 million.
The Jets offered Revis two contracts that offseason: one short-term offer which would increase his 2010 salary and one long-term offer that would have made him a “Jet for life.” Sound familiar? Revis, who wanted to become the highest-paid cornerback in the league, rejected both offers and held out for most of training camp and the entire preseason. The holdout ended on Sept. 5, 2010 when Revis signed a four-year, $46 million contract with $27.5 million guaranteed.
Revis didn’t stay content for long. Before the 2012 season, Revis insinuated that he wanted the final two years of his new deal to be restructured. He ended up not holding out again, but the Jets traded him to the Buccaneers after he missed most of the 2012 season with a torn ACL and the Jets couldn’t come to an extension agreement in the 2013 offseason.
Keyshawn Johnson
Johnson’s dispute with the Jets is multi-faceted. He wanted the Jets to restructure his rookie deal in 2000 following back-to-back Pro Bowl and 1,000-yard receiving seasons. Instead, after a tumultuous four-month stretch that year that included a new owner and two new head coaches, the Jets dealt Johnson to Tampa Bay for two first-round picks.
After Bill Parcells retired to the front office, Bill Belichick resigned as head coach, citing instability following the sale of the team to Woody Johnson. New coach Al Groh became disgruntled with Johnson’s contract demands and traded him even though Johnson said that Parcells tried to rework the deal earlier.
”Once Bill stepped aside, and Bill Belichick took over, I felt confident they would still be able to do something. Once the second Bill left, it was left to the newcomers, and it didn’t come together because Parcells wasn’t as involved as you think,” Johnson told the New York Times after he was traded. ”I wanted to stay in New York as bad as anybody ever. Bill Parcells tried to address the issue. The new people came in and they wanted to go in another direction.”
John Abraham
The Jets actually used one of the two first-round picks they received for Johnson on Abraham in the 2000 draft. He lasted six seasons in New York and ranks third in sacks in franchise history with 53.5.
Abraham’s displeasure with the Jets began in 2005 when the team placed the franchise tag on him after failing to reach an agreement on a long-term deal. He sat out training camp that summer. The Jets then placed the tag on Abrahams for a second consecutive season in 2006 after he posted another 10-plus sack year, but traded him to the Falcons soon after for a first-round pick.
The Jets haven’t had a pass rusher even close to Abraham’s skill since.
Sheldon Richardson
The way the Jets handled Richardson’s contract was much more a pre-emptive move than a reactive one. Richardson publically stated he wanted to be paid “Suh money” when his contract was up, referencing the six-year, $114 million contract defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh signed with the Dolphins in 2015. He also said he wouldn’t take a hometown discount after the Jets drafted him 13th overall in 2013 with the pick they acquired from the Revis trade.
The Jets decided not to wait on Richardson’s future, though, and fielded trade offers throughout the 2016 season before dealing him to the Seahawks in 2017 for receiver Jermaine Kearse and a 2018 second-round pick. There were many reasons the Jets moved Richardson rather than offer him an extension. He had already been suspended twice by the league for substance abuse issues, the Jets had little cap space after signing Muhammad Wilkerson and they were very high on 2015 first-round pick Leonard Williams. Ironically, all three of those players no longer play for the Jets.
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Not much was expected of Fitzpatrick when the Jets traded for him to be Geno Smith’s backup in 2015. But after defensive end IK Enemkpali broke Smith’s jaw following a disagreement, Fitzpatrick took over and led the Jets to a 10-6 season and fell a win short of the playoffs.
Fitzpatrick showed he had a good command of the Jets offense when he threw for 31 touchdowns with Brandon Marshall, Eric Decker and Chris Ivory helping him, but he was an impending free agent. Marshall and Decker publicly endorsed Fitzpatrick in hopes he’d re-signed with the Jets, but New York waited until late July before agreeing to a one-year, $12 million fully-guaranteed contract. The Jets wasted a lot of important offseason training for the offense following a good season, and Fitzpatrick posted a disappointing second season when the Jets went 5-11. He wasn’t re-signed.
Sam Darnold
Darnold’s dispute wasn’t nearly as long or as ugly as the other players on this list. His qualms with the team were less about the money – he was always going to get a four-year deal worth roughly $30 million as the No. 3 pick in 2018 – and more about the fine print of the contract.
Darnold and his agents wanted offset language on his future guarantees to be removed, which would basically allow him to earn the guaranteed money he’s owed by the Jets even if he’s cut and signs with another team.
The Jets refused to meet Darnold’s demands but reportedly gave him his full $20 million signing bonus within 15 days of him inking the deal and removed all language that would void guarantees if Darnold were to be fined by the team or the league. Darnold ended up missing about three training camp practices before signing his rookie contract and he eventually won the starting job over Josh McCown.
Quinnen Williams
Like Darnold, Williams didn’t hold out very long and his demands were about the minutiae of his contract language. For Williams, it was all about deferred payment of his $21.5 million signing bonus. He wanted all of his signing bonus to be paid in the first year of his contract instead of over two years because Alabam state income tax – where Williams legally resided until the end of 2019 – is a lot lower than New Jersey – where he’d live in 2020.
The Jets didn’t initially want to give Williams all his money upfront and offered him one of the lowest deferred payment options of any pick in the top 10 – the Jets drafted Williams third overall. In the end, the two sides came to an agreement that gave him 75 percent of his bonus in 2019 and 25 percent in 2020. He only missed one day of training camp.
