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 ?
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 ?