Graham projections

[Hawks46]

I think we did this when he first was traded, but we've got some OTA's under our belts and Ivotuk posted a FO article on our OL, so I got curious and started digging around.

Here's something pretty cool: how the teams in our division covered TE's last year:
ARI ranked 27th giving up 7.5 rec/game and 66 yards/game.
STL ranked 6th at 7.3 rec/game and 44.4 yards/game
SF ranked 9th at 7 rec/game and 52.4 yards/game.

We saw this in the regular season with Luke Willson's biggest game coming against ARI. To my knowledge, they still haven't added anyone with speed to their LB corps.

Next up would be SF. Most 3-4 teams cover TE's with their LB's, and SF's were ranked pretty decent in coverage. Thing is, LB is now one of their weakest spots on the defense. Smith is a dedicated rusher, Brooks is average in coverage, and the rest of the guys are really young.

The best was STL, who's 4-3 LB corps is dang near as good as ours. All of these teams were giving up at least 7 rec/game.

For a fun reference, we were ranked 18th, giving up 6.3 rec/game and 41.3 yards/game. No, I don't always understand FO's ranking system.

Graham is one of the worst physical mismatches at TE in the league. Per Kearly's thread about Wilson throwing a lot to Graham, we can assume we're going to hit Graham whenever we can.

So, what's your projections for Graham's numbers going into the year?

Previously, I'd said 70-80 rec's for 900 yards and 10 TD's.
I will revise that a bit to: 85 rec, 1100 yards and 12 TD's. This seems overly optimistic to me, but taking our opponent's averages in division (accounting for 2 of them to be top 10 in the league against TE's), and taking 1.5 rec/game away due to our lack of passing attempts (an arbitrary number I came up with) I can come up with a SWAG.

What say you ?

Another huge factor is how they defend him at reciever, where he'll be against cbs. Or what happens if he's alternating between te and wr. He might be too unique and special to apply a prediction calclulus to.

Oh, I agree....but it's fun to try. I was also backwards engineering this a bit and went after what our opponents allow, which probably isn't the most accurate. Other teams might throw against them more, etc. But it's also not accurate to look at a guy like Graham and apply our previous TE numbers to him.

 

[Hawks46]

Reception leaders the past 3 years:
Baldwin, 66 / 825 (2nd: Kearse, 38 / 537; Top TE: Willson, 22 / 362)
Tate, 64 / 898 (2nd: Baldwin, 50 / 778; Top TE: Miller, 33 / 387)
Rice, 50 / 748 (2nd: Tate, 45 / 688; Top TE: Miller, 38 / 396)

Receiving TD leaders the past 3 years:
Lynch - 4
Tate, Baldwin, Miller - 5
Rice, Tate - 7
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It's tricky trying to predict how one of the most productive receivers in the league will perform in the offense of one of the lowest-volume-passing teams. My expectations for Graham:

67 rec, 740 yards, 9 TD
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Floor:
40 rec, 450 yds, 6 TD

Ceiling:
75 rec, 900 yds, 15 TD

That sounds about right, and is pretty much spot on with what I initially predicted. I also shot low (like a lot of people here) based upon our offensive numbers, and lack of passing numbers. When I went back and looked on it, here's what I saw:

Wilson was 285/452 for the year, both career highs. In Wilson's 3 years, both his attempts and completions have steadily gotten higher. He averaged 18 completions per game for 63%. My theory is that Graham will likely aid in offensive efficiency, especially on 3rd downs, which means we'll probably get more offensive plays in this year. Adding to that, Graham will take some receptions away from our average to above average WRs. This means we won't necessarily have to upset our run/pass balance, or pass more OFTEN to have greater passing numbers. Add in Graham's catch radius and dominance in the league before, and it's not hard to imagine him averaging 6-7 rec/game, which ends up being 96-112 receptions. Which all just blows our collective minds and most of us (myself included) say "whoah! no way in our offense will we have a receiver with those numbers".

Luke Willson averaged 16.5 yards/reception last year. Graham has averaged 10.5, 14, 11.5, and 13.2 his last 4 years. That's an average of 12.3 yards/catch. Even if he does only get 70 catches next year (which is 20% below his two worst years) he's getting 861 yards. In our offense, the TE stretches the field a bit more than he did in NO.

This is why this is so much fun !

 

[theincrediblesok]

I think TD wise Graham could get at least 10 TD for the year. What would happen is that it opens up more receiving TD for the other guys. When we had Harvin and used him before the Cowboys game, Lynch had 3 receiving TD, 1 TD for Turbin, 1 TD for Coleman, 1 TD for Ricardo, and 1 TD for Kearse. What that shows is that teams were focused on Harvin that when Lynch slips away, or the others players forgotten by their man, we made them pay. I see the same thing happening for Graham the only difference is that even when they know it's coming to Graham they might not be able to stop him. I have stated before that if anyone was going to reach 1k yards it's going to be Doug. When you have Lynch and Graham in the lineup, plus Wilson's mobility, teams would play closer to the LOS, meaning Doug could be slipping out more open than usual.

 

[SeaChase]

Someone needs to pull up the projections for Percy Harvin. If I remember correctly, some said he would break the Seahawks receiving record...

 

[Weadoption]

He pulls a hammy misses the reg season but comes back in the NFC title game for 12 catches, 900 yards and 12 TDs.
Packers lose another one.