Seahawks 25 best players, #6 Jimmy Graham
By Dan Viens
The Seattle Seahawks roster is generally regarded as one of the best in the NFL top to bottom, but what about the talent level within the roster? Our co-editor Dan Viens takes a shot at ranking the team’s Top 25 players in order.
(PART 20 OF 25 IN A SERIES)
NFL Network does their Top 100 NFL players list every year, and this off season we’ve seen our share of analysts taking a crack at ranking the best rosters in the league. As we enter into the dog days of the off season, with the start of training camp still over a month away, I wanted to see what it would look like if I tried to rank the best 25 players the Seahawks have.
It was harder than I thought.
The top 10 was pretty easy. I would suspect most would end up with the same 10-12 names in some order or another. After that it gets dicey.
Among the challenges, how do you figure in the rookies and players who have never played a down in Seattle?
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My criteria was wide-ranging. Sometimes I went with pure talent, and other times I gave more weight to the players importance to the team. And in certain cases the players role…….played a role in my ranking. When in doubt, however, I would just ask myself “who’s the better player?”
So here we go……
The 6th Best Player On The Seahawks Roster is….
#6: Jimmy Graham, TE
If I were to ask you all to name the Top 10 current Seahawk players off the top of your head, I’m quite sure many of you would forget to name Graham. Heck, even I might have.
It’s not just because his injury in week #11 last year ended his season early, but more so the fact that the frustration of how the Seahawks were using him (or not using him) until that point rendered our memories of him in New Orleans moot.
It may be hard to imagine, but this is a guy who just two seasons ago caught 16 TD passes.
Now 29, and coming off a serious knee injury, Graham is at a crossroads. The Seahawks may also see it as a defining opportunity in their potential future together. Graham has two years left on his contract at an average of $8.5 million annually. None of what remains is guaranteed, and since he was brought in via trade there is no dead money from his signing bonus. If this doesn’t work, they can cut or trade him with no cap hit.
That being said, there’s a chance the Graham acquisition could still be seen as a home run, provided he makes a full recovery from his injury. The team made a number of personnel moves this year which will now allow them to use him more like the Saints did, as a huge, glorified WR. No more having to mess around with the appearances of Graham trying (and mostly failing) to be an in-line blocker.
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If that knee holds up, Graham being moved around and used in the slot and out wide could pose massive problems for opposing defenses, and quickly restore his reputation an an elite offensive weapon.