| BakoSaint |
08-22-2023 01:38 PM |
Re: Jimmy Graham Arrested?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rugby Saint II
(Post 977840)
I actually feel bad for the guy. Jimmy has been a good team mate where ever he suited up. He seems like a really good guy and I feel bad that his passion for flying planes may be grounded forever. Like K said. It's unfortunate. But maybe there is a deeper issue that he can get under control and lead a good healthy life.
Incidentally, I don't hold the whole TE/WR contract dispute against Jimmy. As I understand it the NFLPA insisted on the WR designation. Not Jimmy. Although I'm sure his agent liked the idea of extra money. ;)
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I feel bad for Graham too. I hope he is able to recover. If he can't fly, maybe he can at least enjoy flying with a friend or something. As a player he was very exciting. At his peak I just didn't value him as highly as the contract I believed he would be able to negotiate with another team. That is nothing personal. He was just not built to be a brawler and at the time the NFL was allowing secondary's like Seattle's to get more physical. He also didn't seem to have Tony Gonzalez's ability to brush off the big hits and get away with being a finesse TE against tough defenses. So Graham would rack up stats in the regular season and then in the playoffs a defensive team would put a big physical corner on him and he would become a liability. He didn't perform like a top WR who would beat the top big corner half the time, the top corner would dominate him. I think Gronk was a lot more valuable because although they could put up similar numbers in the regular season, Gronk was much harder to account for in the playoffs because if you tried to beat up Gronk you were going to get your own stars hurt and have them on the turf holding their knees watching Gronk spike the ball. If you got physical with Graham with defensive stars your stars were going to be on top of the ball in the endzone with a touchback. Some of the same issues I had with Brandin Cooks. Both were big playmakers but both had some limitations on contested plays against the best defenses.
I think we were smart to trade both Graham and Cooks, because ultimately if you are a perennial playoff team you don't want to invest too much in players who are built to get you to the playoffs but not win there. I think Payton's mentality was changing after moving on from those players. It doesn't mean they were bad guys, just not everyone has that extra physical gear for knock down drag out games, and you can't be spending what they were going to demand on regular season stats alone. Its good to have players who need to be accounted for, but its better to have players who can't be accounted for, and with Graham and Cooks we faced paying the latter price for the prior ability.
I hope Graham can come back. I think he can possibly be an effective role player at this stage in his career if teams simply fail to account for him. |
