The Most Underrated Free-Agent Signing of 2018? Jimmy Graham to Green Bay
In Aaron Rodgers' last full season of 2016, the Green Bay Packers' franchise quarterback led the league with 40 passing touchdowns, including 31 from the opposing 19-yard line in. Of those touchdowns, just three were thrown to tight ends: two to Richard Rodgers and one to Jared Cook.
In 2017, Rodgers missed nine games with a broken collarbone and still threw 16 touchdown passes. Just one was to a tight end: Lance Kendricks in Week 3 against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Rodgers is obviously one of the best and most prolific quarterbacks in NFL history despite a schematically regressive passing game, and he's been that without a top-tier tight end.
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Jermichael Finley leads the Packers in receptions (223), receiving yards (2,785) and receiving touchdowns (20) among Packers tight ends since Rodgers became the team's full-time starter in 2008. He also hasn't played since 2013. Richard Rodgers, selected in the 2014 draft as Finley's ostensible replacement, has 120 catches for 1,166 yards and 13 touchdowns over four seasons.
Serviceable but hardly world-beating.
Releasing long-time star Jordy Nelson will no doubt leave a thorn in Aaron Rodgers' side coming into the 2018 season because the Packers have no other wide receiver who pairs Nelson's combination of size (6'3") and speed.
But the team's new regime under first-year general manager Brian Gutekunst has broken with former GM Ted Thompson's preference to be passive in free agency by signing former Saints and Seahawks tight end Jimmy Graham to a three-year deal.
This will be among the most impactful moves in free agency.
Given head coach Mike McCarthy's preference for receivers who beat their defenders with physical abilities as opposed to schematic help, the lack of a big body who can win one-on-one battles in the red zone has been a noticeable deficit in Green Bay's offense over the last half-decade. It makes Rodgers' year-to-year performances all the more remarkable in that he's doing what he does with receivers who have been limited by their playbook and by their own physical limitations and injuries.
Graham presents new challenges for defenses trying to deal with Rodgers' clinical expertise. Most red-zone passing plays have pressed Rodgers to make things happen outside of structure, because Green Bay's offense is short on route combinations that generally work so well near the goal line, especially against man coverage. If you're not going to call rub routes or slant/fade crossers even though they've been proved to be highly effective, you're going to have to rely on receivers who can create touchdowns by way of their physical gifts.
The Seahawks traded starting center Max Unger and their 2015 first-round pick for Graham in March 2015 and spent the next two seasons trying to turn him into more of a traditional blocking tight end who would catch short and intermediate passes.
It was a weird marriage from the start, because like everyone in NFL history from Kellen Winslow to Antonio Gates, Graham has always been more of a post-up player who uses his 6'7", 260-pound frame to physically dominate any linebacker, safety or cornerback unfortunate enough to single cover him.
Once former Seahawks offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell finally realized he had one of the better basketball-style tight ends in the league, he started to create scenarios where Graham could "create in the paint."
It worked. Graham caught 10 touchdown passes on 57 receptions, the first time he'd hit double digits in touchdowns since 2014, his final season with the Saints. It wasn't quite his league-leading 16-touchdown season in 2013, but given the broken nature of Seattle's pass protection and the number of times Russell Wilson had to scramble for his life just to stay upright, it was an impressive total.
Now, with Rodgers as his captain, Graham could once again become the premier red-zone receiving threat in the league. When you watch his 10 touchdowns from last season—none of which was over 18 yards in length—you see a player who can create impossible coverage situations over and over with limited route concepts.
It's no wonder this deal was a slam dunk for the Packers.
Two of Graham's 2017 touchdowns typify the matchup issues he creates. Let's look at his 11-yard touchdown in Seattle's Week 13 win over the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. Here, Graham (No. 88) motions pre-snap from right to left, revealing Philly's man coverage, as safety Malcolm Jenkins (No. 27) follows him to that side.
At the snap, Graham combines with receiver Paul Richardson (No. 10) on a rub route that takes Jenkins out of the play for a split second.
True to his status as one of the best coverage safeties in the league, Jenkins recovers and gets back on Graham, but the throw from Wilson is excellent. He puts it closer to the boundary where Jenkins isn't, and Graham is too fast a target for Jenkins to disrupt the pass.
This six-yard touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 10 shows how tough Graham is for a safety to cover on a simple goal-line slant. Tyvon Branch (No. 27) is on Graham through the route as linebacker Karlos Dansby (No. 56) blitzes from the same side.
Dansby gets through to pressure Wilson, but the Cardinals may have been better off with Dansby bracketing Graham.
At the snap, Graham bodies Branch out of the play as an offensive lineman would—he just pushes Branch off—and moves smoothly to the end zone for an easy play. Branch does his best to keep up, but at 5'11" and 197 pounds, there's no way he's going to beat Graham in a jump-ball battle.
That's not to say Graham is a perfect player.
There were times when he didn't live up to his potential during his tenure in the Emerald City, and Rodgers' presence won't fix everything. Graham is a half-interested blocker at best, and I have him charted as directly responsible for four of Wilson's 11 interceptions last season—either through drops or indifferent route-running.
Wilson had two picks against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 4, and you can put both of them at Graham's feet. The first came with three minutes, 41 seconds left in the first half, and it starts with Graham motioning from left to right to help Wilson discern that the Colts are playing zone coverage.
At the snap, Graham rumbles past linebacker John Simon (No. 51) to run a deep drive route to the boundary with safety Matthias Farley (No. 41) covering him. One thing you'll see from Graham on far too many deeper routes is that despite his ability to physically tower over defenders, he does an adequate-at-best job of adjusting his route to the ball if it isn't where he originally thinks it's going to be.
This happens here, as Wilson underthrows the ball a bit in relation to where Graham is going, and Farley easily jumps the route for the interception.
Receivers are often tasked to modify their routes to the ball, and the best ones do just that. Graham doesn't do that here when he should stay in front of Farley to be in position for the ball, and the Seahawks pay for it.
The second Wilson pick came with 6:01 left in the third quarter, and safety Malik Hooker (No. 29) got this one. The problem on this pass wasn't about a route—it was simply that Graham let the ball get through his hands, and the opportunistic Hooker was in the right place at the right time.
Then again, when you look at some of the route concepts Seattle limited Graham to—this NFL Next Gen Stats route chart from the Seahawks' Week 5 win against the Los Angeles Rams shows no pass thrown to Graham over seven yards in the air—you might understand why he's a bit limited in space. And his liabilities as a blocker only matter if you consider him an in-line tight end, which he isn't and has never been.
What Graham can easily be for the Packers is the most dominant red-zone target Rodgers has ever had and a key puzzle piece to help one of the NFL's all-time great quarterbacks be even more productive.
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