Colts not re-signing Mike Adams

[HoosierinFL]

Originally Posted by Coltsalr

And the fact that bringing in a 33 year old safety that did a good, but not spectacular job was one of his greatest moves, kinda says it all.

I'm not quite sure if it was really a great move or not. Adams had a good stint here, but this was also a move that accompanied letting Antoine Bethea go. It's not clear this was an upward move at all, plus we lost Bethea's leadership as a longtime Colts player.

look at their stats
2014
Bethea: 86 tackles, 1 sack, 10 passes defensed, 4 INTs, probowl (set a career high in INT return yardage)
Adams: 87 tackles, 0 sack, 11 passes defensed, 5 INTs, probowl

That is a roughly equivalent season
2015, Bethea torn a pectoral muscle and went on IR after 7 games. This works out for us since Adams was healthy, but you never know if that injury would have happened if Bethea was in Indy. Adams also missed 3 games this year. I report stats per game below because of this:
Bethea: 6.3 tackles per game, .14 sack per game, .29 passes defensed per game, 0 INTs
Adams: 4 tackles per game, .08 sack per game, .46 passes defensed per game, .38 INT per game. (probowl)
So a better year for Adams in terms of pass defense and INTs and of course games played, but Bethea still was playing well.

2016:
Bethea: 95 tackles (Career high), 0 sack, 3 pass defense, 1 INT
Adams: 62 tackles, 0 sack, 2 pass defense, 2 INT

Bethea is still producing, Adams wasn't terrible, but barring injury, Bethea looks to have had the slightly better stats over the last 3 years.

Again I think there was value in keeping some of the old guard around. But it seems Grigson wanted those guys gone.