SEATTLE — For as long as he has been the coach of the Seattle Seahawks — and likely well before that — Pete Carroll has expressed a desire to acquire one of the rarest players in football: the touchdown-maker.
On Tuesday, in a stunning move, the Seahawks got one of the best, acquiring All-Pro tight end Jimmy Graham in a trade with New Orleans, a move that gives Russell Wilson a type of weapon he has yet to throw to in his NFL career.
Yes Marshawn Lynch rushes for plenty of touchdowns, and Wilson is responsible for plenty more, but the type of player Carroll has for so long desired is the mismatch creator. The kind of player who is open even when he’s covered, who a quarterback can throw to in the red zone even when everyone knows that’s where the quarterback is throwing, who — and I apologize if it’s too soon for this — a team can throw to if they don’t want to run the ball on second-and-goal from the 1-yard line at the end of a Super Bowl.
“It’s so rare that you get opportunities to get this kind of a player,” Carroll said of Graham, who has averaged 88.5 catches, 1,099 yards and 11.5 touchdowns per season since 2011.
Of course, adding such a rare difference-maker in a move nobody saw coming doesn’t come without a steep price and plenty of risk. Not only are the Seahawks giving up this year’s first-round pick and All-Pro center Max Unger to acquire Graham and a fourth-round pick, they’re also taking on a contract that will pay him $27 million over the next three seasons.
While there are no guarantees this deal will work out for the Seahawks, the move does once again show some of the traits that have helped Carroll and general manager John Schneider turn the Seahawks into one of the NFL’s model franchises. On a day when NFL teams kicked off the new league year with a flurry of wild moves, none were bolder, more unpredictable or potentially more significant than the Seahawks’ acquisition of Graham.
In transforming the Seahawks from a struggling, aging team to champions, Schneider and Carroll have made many unconventional, unpredictable and ultimately brilliant decisions to build one of the NFL’s most talented rosters. They have also, of course, made a few mistakes, none more glaring than the Percy Harvin trade that they admitted was a failure when they shipped him off to the New York Jets last fall. Carroll and Schneider hope they learn something from that mistake, but on Tuesday, they emphatically showed that they weren’t scarred by it.
“I think you get to learn from your past and make sure to cover your bases,” Schneider said. “… There are a lot of questions you have to get answered and we feel like we did that, and that we learned from our previous trade with Percy.”
The two trades aren’t the same for numerous reasons, nor are Harvin and Graham the same type of player, but Tuesday’s trade, which came just five months after the Seahawks admitted failure with Harvin, does show that the Seahawks won’t be gun-shy when it comes to upgrading their roster, even after a mistake, nor will they rest on their laurels even after consecutive trips to the Super Bowl. In this case, that meant recognizing a team in salary cap trouble and pouncing when one of its best players became available.
Under Carroll and Schneider, the Seahawks have three times traded for star offensive players, first adding Marshawn Lynch, a massive success, then acquiring Harvin, a clear bust. Graham’s impact is yet to be determined, but he is very much the kind of difference-maker who could help the Seahawks offense take a big step forward in 2015.
He won’t put up the same numbers in Seattle as he did in New Orleans, but Graham can still be a matchup nightmare, the kind of player who dictates coverage and who can create more favorable running situations for Lynch, or better matchups for Doug Baldwin, Jermaine Kearse, Luke Willson and others.
“He’s just a fantastic target that we can implement in a number of ways,” Carroll said. “It’s pretty clear, he’s a big receiver, plays big, makes plays in a crowd, makes plays on top of guys. He’s a very effective player in the red zone, he has been a terrific, consistent scorer, all of that stuff.”
Of course this deal isn’t without risk. The Seahawks go from having one of the best centers in the game to having a question mark in the middle of their offensive line, a loss that is only magnified by the fact that left guard James Carpenter signed with the New York Jets Tuesday. And now the Seahawks don’t have a first-round pick with which they could potentially address those needs. Oh, and Graham’s first meeting with the team could be a bit awkward considering he nearly got into a pregame fight with Bruce Irvin before a playoff game two seasons ago, and was called “overrated” and “soft” by Michael Bennett after that game.
Carroll dismissed those past issues as “gamesmanship” and said it won’t be a problem, and while he and Schneider admit Unger will be hard to replace, they simply couldn’t pass up on a chance to get a rare touchdown-maker. This trade isn’t a no-brainer, but it is quintessential Schneider and Carroll: bold, unpredictable, and possibly another move that will make the Seahawks significantly better going forward.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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