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This week the NFL fined Seattle Seahawks safety Jamal Adams $50,000 after Adams, according to the league, "directed verbal remarks and made inappropriate physical contact" with a doctor in the bench area of Seattle's Week 6 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, a league source tells CBS Sports.

In a letter to Adams this week, the league said Adams interfered with orderly administration of the game when the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant (UNC) was walking with Seahawks wide receiver Jake Bobo to the blue medical tent for evaluation of a concussion.

Bobo had just hauled in a 20-yard pass from Geno Smith when Bengals safety Dax Hill delivered a big hit on Bobo that resulted in a penalty. Bobo was removed from the game for an evaluation but would pass the check and return to the game.

A source tells CBS Sports there is video of the incident which the league reviewed before issuing the fine.

Sunday's incident came after a nationally televised incident earlier in the month on "Monday Night Football" on Oct. 2 when Adams yelled at another independent doctor on the sideline as he was taken for a concussion evaluation.

Adams was ultimately diagnosed with a concussion. And though the NFL weighed fining him then, the league did not punish Adams for his actions while concussed, and he issued a public apology later in the week.

"First and foremost, I want to apologize to the OG. You did everything right when you realized I was concussed, I apologize for any negative energy I brought your way," Adams wrote in early October.

"Watching the replay, I am thankful for your patience knowing I wasn't myself in that moment. You're a real one and you serve a great purpose that benefits the NFL and so many players. Prioritizing player's health is essential. Much respect to you!"

A league source said Adams is not considered a "repeat offender," and the $50,000 fine for Sunday's incident does not take into account the events on Oct. 2.

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RENTON, Wash. -- In past responses to questions about his ongoing penalty problem, Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf has expressed contrition while vowing to be better.

He struck a much different tone Wednesday.

A defiant and defensive Metcalf challenged the scrutiny he has received in the wake of his latest 15-yard infraction, including some that came from his own head coach, Pete Carroll.

"I'm not going to change the way I play," Metcalf said.

The subject was raised anew after Metcalf was flagged for unnecessary roughness in the Seahawks' 17-13 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday. It was his fifth penalty of the season (including one offsetting), which is tied with Seahawks guard Phil Haynes for 15th most among all players and tops among receivers.

A few minutes earlier, when asked about Metcalf's penalties, Carroll told reporters that he brought up the issue in a team meeting on Monday to underscore the importance of fixing it.

"We put all the penalties on the board in Monday's meetings and the guys who had the most were on the top, and he was up there with another guy," Carroll said. "We all have to acknowledge it and recognize what our issues are, whatever they are. It happens to be in this case he's getting called.

"He knows. He's got to clean it up. We have to make sure we're aware of how they're calling stuff. He's a very aggressive player, very physical and it stands out and he draws attention because of that. So we've got to be cleaner. He knows it and he's got to get it done."

Asked about Carroll's message in the team meeting, Metcalf downplayed the issue, saying, "It was just a board to me."

"If you look at the penalties, it was a taunting, unnecessary roughness, face mask, holding and I think it was one more in there," he said, referring to an illegal blindside block. "So I'm doing pretty good if I look at it and judge myself, how I play. I just try to be consistent and have clean hands or whatever the case may be, but I'm not going to change who I am as a player or a person."

With at least 900 yards in each of his first four NFL seasons and a team-high 337 through five games this year, Metcalf, who has been playing through a rib injury since Week 2, is off to one of the most prolific starts of any receiver in franchise history. But penalties have dogged him. He has been flagged 10 times for either taunting, unsportsmanlike conduct, unnecessary roughness or disqualification, the most in the NFL since he made his debut in 2019. His 28 total penalties in that span are five more than any other receiver.

Asked whether some of those penalties have been a case of letting his emotions get the better of him, Metcalf asked the media member who posed the question whether he has ever had a bad day at work.

"All right, so that's all I'll nail it down to," he said. "Nobody's perfect. I'm my own person, like I just said. I'm a competitive person, so I'm not going to shy away because he put a penalty board on the screen. I'm just going to continue to be me."

Carroll drew a distinction between Metcalf's penalty against the Bengals and others he has committed when losing his cool in the heat of the moment, saying this one was partly the result of the receiver not knowing the play was over.

In the second quarter, Metcalf was blocking more than 30 yards downfield after Geno Smith dumped off to running back Zach Charbonnet for a 4-yard gain. The flag came when Metcalf shoved cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt to the ground after the play had been whistled dead.

Metcalf told Carroll he couldn't hear the official's whistle because he was so far away. Carroll bought the explanation and said Metcalf's aggressiveness is part of what makes him a successful receiver, but he put the onus on Metcalf to tone it down in situations where it could hurt the team.

"It's a competitiveness that's special in guys, but you have to channel it properly and that comes with experience, and sometimes it comes with the pain of it," Carroll said of Metcalf. "So the main thing is that we're addressing it and we're on it and he knows it and he wants to get it right. He doesn't want to hurt our team by making penalties, but he's not the only one. We've got to do way better in the penalty department."

The Seahawks have committed 49 total penalties this season, which is tied for sixth most even though they've played only five games. Their 39 accepted penalties are tied for 10th most.

Regarding his penalty problem, Metcalf said in 2021 that he needed to do a better job of not letting defenders get under his skin. Later that season, after he was ejected for a scuffle late in a loss to the Green Bay Packers, he acknowledged he needed to "grow up," given his rising profile as a team leader.

In the season opener, Metcalf was flagged for taunting as he exchanged words with the Los Angeles Rams' bench, which was upset at how he shoved cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon to the ground at the end of the previous play. The hit and the penalty led to a pair of fines from the league office as well as another sit-down with Carroll. Metcalf again acknowledged afterward that he's "got to be better."

His comments on Wednesday lacked any of those past sentiments.

"I'm just going to leave that up to everybody else," Metcalf said when asked if he feels like he has made progress in the penalty department. "I don't feel like I was a problem or I needed to make progress in a certain area. Football is a violent sport, and it's my one opportunity to be violent, on game day. So I'm just going to continue to do that."

Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner, a longtime team captain and a mentor to Metcalf early in his career, said the receiver needs to remember that officials are keeping an extra close eye on him.

"I'm pretty sure the teams that are playing him are pointing that out pregame -- 'Hey, watch 14, watch 14,'" Wagner said. "Sometimes you've got to remind him that when you set that type of precedent, it takes a while for that to go away. So that's the biggest thing is just understanding that they're watching him, they aren't going to let him get away with stuff that maybe other guys get away with, and be mindful of it."

Metcalf was asked how much his reputation precedes him with officials.

"Every time before a game, it's always, 'Hey, let's try to play a clean game today,'" he said. "I'm like, 'Yes, sir. Good luck doing that. Let's try to make all the right calls as well.' Nobody's perfect. So just continue to put it behind me and continue to play football."

Seattle-based freight startup Convoy is closing down business operations and laying off most of its staff, according to a memo sent to employees Thursday morning by CEO Dan Lewis.

The abrupt shutdown, which reportedly affects several hundred staffers, comes just a day after the high-tech freight brokerage halted all shipments and advised customers to find alternatives.

Convoy, a privately held firm that had won hundreds of millions of dollars in backing from tech players like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, appears to have lost the confidence of some investors amid a slump in the freight business.

In the memo, Lewis said some staff would stay on to manage “this windup transition and potential future strategic options,” but for the rest, “today is your last day at the company.”

A company spokesperson shared the memo with The Seattle Times but did not respond immediately to questions about how many staff were affected or whether they would receive severance packages.

Going into the week, Convoy had around 500 employees, according to GeekWire.

Lewis, an Amazon veteran who co-founded Convoy in 2015, blamed the company’s sudden collapse in part on the broader industry downturn, which has cut demand for the brokerage services Convoy offered.

But Lewis also suggested that investor concerns about the downturn had torpedoed efforts to find a buyer for Convoy and keep the company intact.

“In short, we are in the middle of a massive freight recession and a contraction in the capital markets,” Lewis wrote. “This combination ultimately crushed our progress at the same time that it was crushing our logical strategic acquirer — it was the perfect storm.”

Convoy has also gone through several rounds of layoffs this year and had already shed around two-thirds of the staff it had at its peak, according to media reports.

Although Convoy’s troubles had been known in trucking and tech circles, the speed of its collapse seemed to catch some insiders by surprise.

On Wednesday, FreightWaves, an industry news site, reported that Convoy had told customers that “all shipments have been canceled from our marketplace.” The Wall Street Journal also reported that Convoy had stopped accepting shipments and suspended operations.

It was a stunning fall for a company that, barely a year ago, was valued at nearly $4 billion and was talking about going public.

Convoy had billed itself as a “digital freight network” that used sophisticated software to connect shippers directly to truckers and bypass the brokerage system that has traditionally handled much of the scheduling.

While a large share of trucked cargo today is hauled by big national trucking firms for precontracted prices, a significant share still goes with smaller trucking companies and independent truckers, often for a price negotiated by brokers on the spot.

Convoy aimed to bypass those traditional brokers, which often worked deals by phone, with “machine learning and automation” and an app that would allow carriers with cargoes to find truckers with empty trailers. Convoy’s system would cut out brokerage fees while also reducing waste, the company said.

Convoy was one several firms aiming for “the Uber-ization of U.S. trucking,” as Bloomberg put it last year.

Convoy’s model initially won strong backing from investors, which allowed the company to ramp up hiring and build out its platform. By late 2022, the company had a network of more than 400,000 trucks and “a roster of shippers including Home Depot, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Anheuser-Busch,” according GeekWire.

Convoy also benefited from a surge in cargo demand and an acute shortage in global and domestic shipping capacity, exacerbated by the pandemic, which pushed up cargo volumes and shipping prices.

By April 2022, Convoy had raised $928 million in equity and venture debt and was valued at $3.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company’s head count was up to 1,300, and included many veterans of the Seattle-area tech community.

Mark Okerstrom, Convoy’s president and chief operating officer, had been a chief executive and chief financial officer of the online travel company Expedia Group. Lewis and co-founder Grant Goodale had worked at Amazon.

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And, like most venture-backed firms, Convoy and its investors were also considering going public, the Journal reported.

But even by last April, cargo demand was softening and prices were falling, especially in the “spot” market that is the bread and butter of brokerages, the Journal reported.

The decline spurred more intense competition for remaining shipping demand, “which is crushing smaller companies,” said Emily Nasseff Mitsch, an analyst at CFRA who covers trucking and rail.

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On Monday, another freight industry startup, San Francisco-based Flexport, announced layoffs of around 20% of its workforce, including 165 employees in its Bellevue office.

But freight startups had another problem. Many weren’t yet profitable and still depended on outside financing, according to media reports. But investors, which had already begun to pull back from a cooling tech sector, now became doubly wary of freight ventures.

“In the height of the technology boom, startups could secure millions in funding in mere days. With increased market volatility, we’ve seen a broader shift in the [venture capital] landscape as investors become more cautious,” Jett McCandless, founder and CEO of project44, a supply chain data company, told FreightWaves after cutting around 130 jobs last spring.

“No startup, not even the rocket ships of logistics technology, will be immune to these trends,” McCandless added.

In his memo to employees, Lewis seemed to acknowledge investors’ cooling ardor for companies that have yet to turn a profit. The “dramatic monetary tightening we’ve seen over the last 18 months has dramatically dampened investment appetite and shrunk flows into unprofitable late stage private companies,” Lewis wrote.

Industry insiders say that without that additional funding, and lacking the cash reserves that more profitable freight companies had accumulated during the pandemic, Convoy’s options were limited.

Lewis told employees that the company had “spent over 4 months exhausting all viable strategic options for the business,” but couldn’t see a way to turn the company around.

“Despite your excellent work … and the painful and sweeping cost cuts you have had to endure, it was still not enough to get us into the financial position necessary to withstand the increasing pressures of the industry, without the need for outside funding,” he wrote.

Paul Roberts: [email protected]; on Twitter: @Pauledroberts.

Coming off the most productive game of his young career, Jaxon Smith-Njigba is becoming a bigger factor in Seattle’s offense.

After fracturing his wrist in preseason, Seahawks rookie receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba had surgery and made a remarkably quick comeback to be ready for the season opener.

It was an impressive comeback, to be sure, but the time Smith-Njigba missed, as well as the fact that he was playing with a brace to protect the injury through Seattle's first four games, were factors in what was, statistically speaking at least, a slow start to his professional career.

No one within the organization was worried about the first-round pick's lack of production, he had shown plenty in training camp to show he is the real deal, but it was still nice for the rookie to be more involved in the offense in Seattle's Week 6 game at Cincinnati. In that game, Smith-Njigba caught four passes for a season-best 48 yards, and he also was on the field for 72 percent of the team's offensive snaps, also a season-high. That solid performance could have looked even better had Geno Smith been able to hit him for a potential touchdown, a play on which the rookie broke wide open, but Smith, feeling pressure off the edge, tucked the ball and ran for a first down instead of making the throw.

"I had more plays, so that always feels good to be out there," Smith-Njigba said. "… I know they have confidence in me to make plays and they believe in me. They tell me a lot, and I can feel that from them, and I have that of myself too. So I know more opportunities will be schemed up for me and more opportunities will come down the road."

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll noted both after the game and again on Wednesday that Sunday's game was "by far" Smith-Njigba's best yet.

"I tried to make a point about it, because I wanted him to hear it too, that he played really well in the running game, he was really clean with his assignments, we moved him around quite a bit, he came through on his catches and his plays," Carroll said. "He did a really nice job in the game. This is six weeks in the season coming up, and he's not wearing a cast anymore, he's not wearing anything on his wrist anymore and he blocked well, threw his hands in there aggressively. I think any passing of judgement up until now was premature. He's just getting going. We love him and he's going to be a really big factor for us."

And again, no one who saw Smith-Njigba in training camp or in the preseason before his injury is at all surprised that he's becoming a bigger factor.

"He's been doing that in practice ever since he's gotten here," receiver DK Metcalf said. "Just really waiting on him to really blossom and just show who he really is out there on the field."

Neither Smith-Njigba nor Carroll used the wrist injury as an excuse early in the year, but it was a factor, Carroll acknowledged.

"I think it's a significant thing, and he was perfect about handling it—admirable and took leadership in that regard early in the season, showing guys that he could overcome and get back out and all of that," Carroll said. "The best is yet to come."

Said Smith-Njigba, "It was a challenge, but we took care of it, and I feel like we made all the right moves. I definitely feel better each week, and can actually do some more stuff with it. So my comfortability is rising every day. I feel close to 100 now."

Smith-Njigba understands that he's still in the very early stages of his career, and that the nature of his position means he won't always get the ball a ton, even if he's doing everything right, especially not when he's in an offense that also features DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett at receiver. Even so, it still felt nice to get going last weekend.

"At the end of the day you can only control what you can control, go out there and play as hard as you can and do your job and get open," he said. "But yeah, it's always good to do good things out there."

Kickoff: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Husky Stadium

TV: FS1

Radio: SportsRadio 93.3-FM KJR

Latest line: Huskies by 28.5

QB Michael Penix Jr.: 72.1% completions, 2,301 passing yards, 20 pass TD, 3 INT

WR Rome Odunze: 40 catches, 736 receiving yards, 18.4 yards per reception, 6 receiving TD, 1 rush TD

LB Edefuan Ulofoshio: 38 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, 2 sacks, 1 interception, 1 pass breakup

CB Jabbar Muhammad: 14 tackles, 3 PBU, 2 TFL, 1 sack, 1 INT

QB Trenton Bourguet: 65.3% completions, 726 passing yards, 1 pass TD, 2 INT, 2 rush TD

RB Cam Skattebo: 367 rushing yards, 3.9 yards per carry, 5 rush TD, 245 receiving yards, 1 receiving TD

LB Tate Romney: 30 tackles, 3 PBU, 1.5 TFL, 1 fumble recovery

DL Prince Dorbah: 25 tackles, 7.5 TFL, 6 sacks

With the toughest stretch of UW’s schedule still ahead — ranked November match ups against USC, Utah and Oregon State in consecutive weeks — quarterback Michael Penix Jr. remains the Huskies’ most valuable asset. And though he was sacked just once in last weekend’s win over Oregon, Penix took some legitimate hits and gutted out the fourth quarter while dealing with cramps. UW must continue to protect Penix against an Arizona State defense featuring legitimate pass rushers Prince Dorbah (6 sacks) and B.J. Green (4 sacks). One way to do that? Continue to feed bulldozing running back Dillon Johnson — who has rushed for 328 yards, 6.1 yards per carry and four touchdowns in his last four games.

Washington missed a whopping 21 tackles against Oregon, according to Pro Football Focus, the highest number of the Kalen DeBoer era. Granted, that’s partially due to some proven playmakers — quarterback Bo Nix, running back Bucky Irving, wide receiver Troy Franklin, etc. But UW’s defense entered the week ranked 68^th nationally in opponent yards per carry (4.04), 90^th in total defense (394.3 yards allowed per game), 101^st in opponent red zone touchdown percentage (68.42%) and 113^th in opponent third down conversions (45.26%). On paper, this Arizona State offense doesn’t have the weapons to threaten Washington. But it’s up to the Huskies to finish plays.

Washington just beat its primary rival on the final play of the game, on a national stage, with College GameDay in town, in front of a sold-out, field-storming Husky Stadium. The Huskies cracked the top five in the Associated Press top 25 poll for the first time in six years. And now, they get to host a 1-5 opponent that has yet to pick up a conference win in Pac-12 After Dark. Easy, right? Maybe … but they better not approach it that way. Afterall, a similar Arizona State squad with an interim coach upset UW in Tempe last fall before ultimately finishing 3-9. The Huskies can probably afford a loss somewhere along the line and still sneak their way into the College Football Playoff. But another dud against ASU would be difficult to digest.

After back-to-back one-score wins, it’s time for Washington to assert itself against a lesser opponent. The Huskies will do just that. Penix will be productive and the offense will be balanced, with UW employing an efficient running game. UW’s defense will gain confidence against a Sun Devil attack ranked 127^th nationally in both rushing offense (85.17 yards per game) and yards per carry (2.76). Given that the Sun Devils have already surrendered 22 sacks (116^th), UW’s pass rush should also prosper. This is the same group of Huskies that dropped the ball at Arizona State last fall. History won’t repeat itself on Saturday.

Final score: Huskies 49, Sun Devils 20

Mike Vorel: [email protected]; on Twitter: @MikeVorel. Mike Vorel is the UW football beat writer for The Seattle Times.