Jimmy Graham 2015 Outlook

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Jimmy Graham, TE, Seattle Seahawks has been one of the Top 2 tight ends in fantasy football over the last four seasons. The off season trade to the Seahawks has made some want to shy away from Graham, but I’m advocating that he should remain a high round draft pick for your teams. 

His rookie season he didn’t get much work, but since then he has averaged 88 catches per year, 1099 yards per season, and 11.5 touchdowns.

Graham has been the most consistent TE over the last three seasons 

according to Bob Lung’s consistency rankings. Find Bob's work at ffconsistency.com. Graham has had a total of 38 quality games over that span. Last season, Graham had 11 quality games of his 16 for a consistency percentage of 69. Along with his great quality games numbers, he is the only TE that has had double digit quality games in each of the past three seasons. In 2014 he had the second highest point total for tight ends at 223.9 points for a PPR league.

Graham has a great schedule ahead of him for the 2015 season.

Ranking the seventh easiest, he will only face off against three Top 10 defenses against the TE position. The average rank of the defense he will face is 17.93. The season begins with the only Top 5 defense in the St. Louis Rams that the Seahawks will face. After that game the Seahawks will not face off against another Top 10 team until week 15.

The playoff run for Graham does feature three of the most difficult match ups he will face in 2015. Week 14 has him facing off against the 14^th best defense in the Ravens. The week 15 match up gets a little harder when they face off against the 10^th ranked defense against TE in the Browns. Week 16 will have Graham meeting the Rams for the second time of the season. If your leagues play all 17 weeks of the season, a great finale awaits you in the 29^th ranked Arizona Cardinals.

The average draft position (ADP) for Graham seems a bit high,

but if you draft round one and two well, you can have a guy that is in the elite ranks of TE. According to the ADP on fantasypros.com, Graham can be had at the 26^th overall pick in a standard league, and 29^th overall pick in PPR leagues. Assuming you can draft one to two elite top tier players in the RB or WR categories, Graham allows you a clear advantage over all the other TE except Rob Gronkowski.

As we saw in the Super Bowl last year, the Seahawks need a big, physical player in the red zone. Graham at 6’7 and 260 pounds can definitely provide them this. His basketball background allows him to box out smaller players and dominate the red zone. Third down is another situation where it is likely that Graham will be used, and useful to the Hawks. Getting the tough yards to keep drives alive is another spot it is easy to imagine Graham seeing a lot of usage.

While it is fairly certain that the years of 125 to 145 targets are now behind him, I can see the efficiency of the targets he will get being great. The Seahawks have a three headed monster in the read option and play action plays that they will run. Defenses will have to respect Marshawn Lynch and his running ability. In addition, many defensive units will need to keep a spy on Russell Wilson. This will likely leave a lot of open space in the middle of the field for the third head of this monster to operate.

Trading for Graham in the off season and taking on his contract, which pays him $10 million dollars a year, is another sign to me that he will remain a key offensive weapon. That is a lot of money to pay a player and not make him a big part of your offensive and game plans. If you take a look at the games in which Percy Harvin actually saw the field for the Seahawks in his time in Seattle, they have been known to manufacture ways to get the ball to players that they feel can have big upside and be mismatches for the opposition.

So for these reasons I believe that the schedule outlook for Jimmy Graham in 2015 is in great shape. His usage, needs of the team, consistency, and ability to create mismatches with defenders should all set him up to keep scoring you copious amounts of points in your Fantasy Football games this year.