The Seattle Seahawks don't let pride get in their way when it comes to making the right football decision. Last year, cornerback Cary Williams got $7 million guaranteed from Seattle in free agency and started 10 games for the team. However, despite the investment, coaches wanted to change things up after Williams failed to impress. He was cut in December.
One could argue that the Seahawks should follow a similar path with tight end Jimmy Graham. The 29-year-old is coming off a serious knee injury and is scheduled for cap hits of $9 million next season and $10 million in 2017. In the five games Graham missed last season, Seattle's offense averaged 31.2 points per game. It would appear that the Seahawks don't need him.
But head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider aren't ready to give up on Graham after just one season.
"I communicated with him yesterday, and he seems to be doing really well," Carroll said at the NFL owners meetings. "He's excited about the process, and he's getting through it. This is a big challenge, but he's got a great attitude about it. He's a worker. He's a guy that likes to work out and bust his tail to get right...He is making great progress. He'll be back in town in the next couple of weeks, and we'll really get a great assessment of that, but everything seems to be going really well."
But things weren't going so well for Graham even when he was healthy. In 11 games, Graham caught just 48 passes for 605 yards and two touchdowns. Carroll wants him to become more of a factor near the end zone.
"We wanted to get him the ball in the red zone more," Caroll said. "We didn't do as good of a job there as we thought. By the time he played eight games with us, whatever it was, we would have thought he'd have more touchdown catches. So that was part of maybe developing his impact with our team. But it was just a matter of timing, he and Russell [Wilson] being together and executing better, both of those guys doing better to function at a higher level. That's just the a natural progression of developing a rapport with a player, particularly of this style."
The belief that Seattle's offense dramatically improved without Graham is somewhat inaccurate. In his final three outings, the Seahawks averaged a healthy 33.3 points per game. The team's improvement was due more to scheme adjustments and better play from the offensive line than it did with Graham's offense. You don't get better after you lose a three-time Pro Bowler.
"He cares as much as any player we have ever coached," Carroll said. "He was willing to work at it, and so was Russell, so it was just a matter of time before they would hit like Russell did with Doug [Baldwin] last year. That was a great illustration of what chemistry is all about for a quarterback and a receiver, and I think that was on the way. It's going to happen. We felt we saw all of the examples of that we needed to see."
