Jimmy Graham Out For Year

[savvyman]

That is a huge loss for the Offense.

[Stream Hawk]

Still like to trade. Now we can focus on Rawls and just running the ball. This team does best under adversity; remember all the players we lost last year and still went on massive run

[NorthHawk]

Torn Patellar Tendon.
He might even miss part, if not all of TC.
Maybe we should also be looking for a big TE in the draft.

[RiverDog]

Not a big deal. Although I feel badly for him as he's put forth a good effort and it looked like we were trying to incorporate him more into the offense, the fact is that he was brought in here specifically to help our red zone offense and he's scored just two TD's this season, with just one when in the red zone. He's a finesse player and we're a smash mouth team. This was a bust of a trade.

[HawkDawg]

Seems like these high salary/high profile players never work out for the Hawks. Rice, Harvin, Housh, Graham, etc. Hope we keep looking for those diamonds in the rough, that's where we've found the most success. I'll take a Honda over a Ferrari any day!

[Agent 86]

Not a big deal. Although I feel badly for him as he's put forth a good effort and it looked like we were trying to incorporate him more into the offense, the fact is that he was brought in here specifically to help our red zone offense and he's scored just two TD's this season, with just one when in the red zone. He's a finesse player and we're a smash mouth team. This was a bust of a trade.

Funny, my first thought when he went down was "uh oh"... my quick second thought was about Percy Harvin, and how we did after he was gone. The offense got back to doing what it does best.

I have to say, I tend to agree it was a bad trade now as the "fit" wasn't right, at least so far. I still am optimistic thought the trade can still work out. You can see the offense is trying to transition to more of a passing attack, and Graham will be needed if that's the case.

But for this year, it's weird to say having him out may actually help this offense out of its funk.

[savvyman]

Jimmy Graham has done everything we have asked of him. He has shown toughness in making the difficult catches at big moments in traffic all season. It has been the coaching staff and Russell who failed to integrate the special talents that Jimmy Graham brings to the team. Whenever Jimmy has been called on - with very few exceptions - he has delivered:




He will be greatly missed over the next few weeks.

[Hawktown]

bad trade my ASS!!!

[obiken]

I agree with river, only because we gave up an All pro center and the draft pick. Jimmy was miss used however.

[Seahawks4Ever]

If this injury would have happened before the bye I would agree it was a bust of a trade. But, the last few games J.G. had been working more and more into the flow of the offense. I have always liked Luke, but he does drop a few sometimes, he also comes through in crucial times like he did today.

[mykc14]

That is a huge loss for the Offense.

If "It has been the coaching staff and Russell who failed to integrate the special talents that Jimmy Graham brings to the team" then how can this be such a huge loss for this offense? I think it will be a loss, but not huge.

[Zorn76]

It's a significant loss, but one we can recover from, IMO.

As for the trade - I still like it.

His lack of production in some games has had as much to do with Bevell's schemes and OL ineptness as anything else. It certainly isn't from a lack of effort on his part. His attitude overall has been fine, and this isn't a pass happy, high octane O to begin with (save for games like today).

We'll see how he recovers, but I'll take Graham over Unger and draft pick(s) any day.

[RiverDog]

It's a significant loss, but one we can recover from, IMO.

As for the trade - I still like it.

His lack of production in some games has had as much to do with Bevell's schemes and OL ineptness as anything else. It certainly isn't from a lack of effort on his part. His attitude overall has been fine, and this isn't a pass happy, high octane O to begin with (save for games like today).

We'll see how he recovers, but I'll take Graham over Unger and draft pick(s) any day.

We'd have to put a name by that draft pick to make a judgment like that, wouldn't we?

The fact that Graham's effort and attitude have been great isn't the point. The point is that for whatever reason, whether it be Graham, Bevell, or Russell Wilson, he hasn't produced anywhere close to expectations and that we gave up a player at a position that was already a weakness without any real plan to replace him and surrendered our top draft choice that could have been used in a variety of ways.

Things may change. He could rebound from this injury and come back next season and blow the doors off opposing defenses. But at this point, I can't see anyone being satisfied with the results of this trade.

[Hawktawk]

Unger played in 6 games last year so lets don't get carried away with the value lost in this trade. I liked it when it happened.

It took time to figure out how to use Graham and the line was so comically bad early it was disrupting anything the offense was trying to do. But it was obviously starting to click. I'm unsure of the impact of this injury going forward.Trying to force feed the offense through one guy is not Wilsons way and he won a Super bowl playing his way, spreading the ball around so I think there are still lots of options. Luke Willson isn't exactly chopped liver either .

Right now I feel for Jimmy. He's one of our guys and IMO its pretty harsh to be debating the value of a flipping trade when the guy is under the knife after going down in battle.

Having experienced a fully ruptured patella tendon its a horrible injury which In my case I have never fully recovered from 17 years later. With a world class athlete and modern medicine I'm sure it will be far better for Jimmy but I worry about a guy going from world class athleticism to average after something like this.GDMIT!!!!!

[Zorn76]

Graham doesn't control when he's going to be targeted.
We'd all like to see him have more TD's, and be used more in the redzone, but that's out of his control.

RW has 18 touchdown passes this season, with 8 of those coming in the last two games.
Baldwin is the leader with 6 rec td's, with the remaining 12 being spread out to 7 different players, including 2 for Graham.

We're not a pass happy team, either, barely averaging 30 attempts per game. Keep in mind, too, that we have scored a grand total of 25 TD's as an offense. That's slightly more that two per game.

Unger played in 6 games last year. His play also started slip a bit - that's part of the reason he was traded to begin with.

To each their own.

I like the trade.

[NorthHawk]

From a talent for talent perspective, the trade was pretty much a wash (depending like said above how the draft pick works out), but the bad side of the trade is we didn't address the loss of talent in the middle of the line with 2 starters leaving. This can make the trade look a lot worse than had we only lost Unger - and it showed in the first half of the year.
If our OL can keep getting better, then the trade won't look so bad, but a steadying influence of Unger or any veteran Center was surely missed and probably had a large hand in a few losses early in the year where we couldn't garner a 1st down to run out the clock late in the game. That experience and efficiency is an intangible that can't be measured, but is a real factor in the performance of the OL.

[Zorn76]

Regardless of how this OL finishes the season, it needs to be addressed in the worst way. They have flashes here and there, particularly in the run game, but are not a group that can be banked on for the future.

OL's do need time to gel, but you first gotta have the pieces that are worth gelling to begin with.
We've seen enough of this bunch to know we can do better.
Much better.

[NorthHawk]

I agree with you 100%, Zorn76.
Cable has a different view of what an OL should look like than a lot of teams, it would appear.
The pool for guys who have what he looks for seems to be pretty small if he has to have projects who have never played OL before and expects them to be able to make the leap to the NFL.
I'm of the opinion that we have to start from the inside out. A good Guard would help right from the start and a Center as well as a Tackle if Okung leaves will be required.

Some of the inside guys that I like (but might not fit Cables profile) are:
Sebastian Tretola, Guard, Arkansas.
He's big and strong and I saw him pull to lead a run around the LT. He looked like a freight train against some of the LBs.

Pat Elflein, Guard, Ohio State.
Just a Jr, but he plays like a Sr and he's more like what Cable looks for as he's not the mountain that Tretola is.

Iowa uses a ZBS, and Kirk Ferentz often sends OL to the NFL.
Two players there to watch are Austin Blythe C/G
and Jordan Walsh G/C
These guys are more like the types Cable looks for than the larger types like Tretola or Vadal Alexander from LSU.

[RiverDog]

I wouldn't have minded trading Unger had we a plan in place to replace him or somehow mitigate his absence other than just rely on our current roster players to step up. Keep in mind that this trade came at a time when we lost 3 other starting OL's over the past two seasons.

Secondly, we have targeted Graham lots of times in the red zone. Sometimes I think that we force it in to him too much or that Russell doesn't execute the throws like he should. Certainly not all of that is Graham's fault, but that's not the point. It doesn't matter why he hasn't produced, what matters is that he hasn't.

The book's not closed on this trade by any means, but the first chapter has been awful.

[Hawktawk]

Brees put up 6 points behind Unger Sunday. The trade was better for us than them.

[mykc14]

Don't forget that this trade was a 1st and Unger from Seattle to the Saints for Graham and a 4th. We used that 4th to trade up in the 3rd round and get Tyler Lockett. Looking at it that way a 1st and Unger for Graham and Lockett looks like a win to me. Of course other picks were also used to get Lockett (our 3rd round and 5th rounder's and the 6th rounder we got from the Jets for... wait for it... wait for it... Percy Harvin). So if you really want to look it we gave up 2 #1's, 2 #3's, a #5, a #7, and Unger for Graham and Lockett. That doesn't look so good. Man that Harvin trade turned out bad.

[RiverDog]

Don't forget that this trade was a 1st and Unger from Seattle to the Saints for Graham and a 4th. We used that 4th to trade up in the 3rd round and get Tyler Lockett. Looking at it that way a 1st and Unger for Graham and Lockett looks like a win to me. Of course other picks were also used to get Lockett (our 3rd round and 5th rounder's and the 6th rounder we got from the Jets for... wait for it... wait for it... Percy Harvin). So if you really want to look it we gave up 2 #1's, 2 #3's, a #5, a #7, and Unger for Graham and Lockett. That doesn't look so good. Man that Harvin trade turned out bad.

Yea, you can really spin these trades to fit almost any argument. There are those that will argue that the Harvin trade was worth it because he returned the SB 48 second half kickoff for a touchdown after the score was already 18-0 and well on the way to one of he biggest SB routs in history and completely ignoring the fact that he did absolutely nothing to help us get to the SB in the first place and nearly imploded the team in the following season.

The bottom line on the Graham trade is that he hasn't produced anywhere close to even the most forgiving of expectations.

[Agent 86]

Man, maybe it was the emotion of the game yesterday, but reading my post above, I didn't like that I sounded that way.

First and foremost, I feel bad for Jimmy Graham. No doubt he has worked his arse off trying to learn a new system and it must have been quite frustrating for him. He was recently coming around a bit, although I still feel a lot of throws his way were forced. He has made some spectacular catches and made some big first downs, I know we are all expecting touchdowns, not first downs.

I was reading a report about the type of injury he suffered, and it sounds like it is a tough one to come back from and be 100%. I can only hope for a full recovery.

I still feel what we gave up was worth it, and as RW3 progresses, Jimmy Graham will become more and more valuable to this offence. Hopefully Willson can step up and fill the void like last year.