To say Talib put out the blue print to beating Graham ignores the fact that you have to have a Talib on your team to do it.

I agree with the rest of your post, but this ^^^ I'm surprised you're falling for that line, Oak. That's just more Payton speak, he's been lying to us and the league, he's been masking/hiding flaws in this team all year by saying things like that on the podium. The truth is that in most of the games we've lost, Graham has been shut down, essentially invisible, a non-factor, and the offense suffers. And that was done by several teams that don't have a Talib, not just once. Seattle does not have Talib....the Rams do not have Talib.....I could go on but mercifully I'll stop.

Maybe he is playing hurt, in fact I'm sure he is... I could certainly buy into that, but it still doesn't seem to stop him from scoring 2 touchdowns and playing lights out Jimmy football some weeks (usually at home) and then disappearing completely in others.

You have to be wearing black and gold goggles at this point to try and argue that he is not getting shut down by teams that "don't have a Talib." Exhibit A, 2nd half Seattle.

Seattle didn't shut him down he had 1 TD

Games have two halves. Games are more than one drive, which is basically all we had that went right in Seattle was that one drive, thank God for Jimmy's TD, and it was ridiculously difficult for them just to get that. Obviously, if your definition of "shut down" is absolute zero catches for zero yards in a game, sure, technically no one in the league can shut Jimmy down...you win. I'm talking about whatever a team does, to make Jimmy Graham become a non-factor...I'm simply asking, looking back on the losses, JUST the losses, what does Jimmy produce in the second half, 3rd, 4th quarter, in those games where we are trailing or it's close this year, and we lose? Is he making any big clutch plays late in the day, in those games? Is he making any plays in the second half at all?

Yes, St. Louis kept Jimmy out of the end zone -- and Drew threw for 400 yards. But who won that game, I forget....

I guess I'm not really arguing the "Talib gave the blueprint" meme as much as I'm pointing out, in the games we struggle, Graham is quite often sorta disappearing, in the 2nd half of the games that we have lost this year. Whether Talib is out there or not. Maybe it's the other team making standard halftime adjustments, I don't know. And lately -- as in Seattle and the Rams -- he's there in the 1st half, doing stuff, and then very much NOT there in the 2nd.

Now that may not be a "blueprint" or "shutting down" to you, but it's definitely happening, and it's ended up with the end result the other teams want, of beating the Saints. To say that "nobody shuts down Graham" is squirrely and disingenuous. It's just PR at this point.