Antonio Cromartie on the New York Jets & Jamal Adams saga: 'It is probably beyond repair'

Antonio Cromartie has seen and personally dealt with nasty contract situations, the former All-Pro cornerback knows all too well what New York Jets safety Jamal Adams is going through. After Adams bashed the Jets and head coach Adam Gase on Friday, Cromartie thinks that the relationship between both sides is probably not going to be healed.

Adams told the New York Daily News that he has a poor relationship with Gase and that he wants out of New York.

“To be honest with you, it is probably beyond repair,” Cromartie told Sports Illustrated’s Jets Country.

“That’s just me going at it from the business standpoint.”

Adams and the Jets have had a rocky offseason. A month ago, Adams, set to enter the fourth year of his rookie contract, said that he was promised a contract offer by the Jets this offseason. To date, there has yet to be one.

On numerous occasions, the All-Pro safety has said he wants to be the top-paid player at his position.

Having spent five seasons in New York, Cromartie doesn’t see even a massive new contract offer on the eve of training camp as being able to turn things around. There may be no bridge to cross this divide.

“I think this is a situation where Jamal may stick to his guns,” Cromartie, a four-time Pro Bowl cornerback, said.

“It’s not me speaking for Jamal, it is me as a player looking at it. Looking at the way it is gone, I don’t think offering him a contract that makes him the highest paid [safety] that the problems are going to go away.”

Cromartie detailed his own similar experience. In 2014, Cromartie said that then Jets general manager John Idzik told him that they wanted to bring him back and valued him. But when Cromartie got an offer from the Arizona Cardinals, he called the Jets and Idzik about their offer.

“He never once said anything about a contract,” Cromartie said about that call. “He had an opportunity numerous times to make an offer…he never made it.”

Shortly after that call with Idzik, Cromartie signed with the Cardinals.

In many ways, the former Jets cornerback sees some similarities with how the team is handling things with Adams. It is clear that there is a rift between Adams and Gase, the Jets head coach who led the team to a surprising 7-9 record last year.

But that discord might also trickle up to general manager Joe Douglas, hired last June to replace Mike Maccagnan. It was Maccagnan who drafted Adams in 2017.

Adams turned into a stud safety, making two Pro Bowls already and being name to his first All-Pro last year.

“You look at it, you read it, there’s a lot of miscommunication. There is no trust with the head coach also with the GM – a first time GM. So it’s not there,” Cromartie said. “You can’t tell a player that you’re going to give him a contract, you’re going make an offer but then turn around and you don’t communicate with him or say anything at all.”