Fantasy: Dynasty Stock Market – Jimmy Graham

The Dynasty Stock Market examines players you should buy or sell in your dynasty fantasy football league.

If you’re reading this then you know that getting an edge on your fellow dynasty owners is the key to being successful in the long run.  Identifying and acquiring talent before a player’s “break out” year is the bread and butter of great dynasty roster management.  Today, it’s time to get to know Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints.

At the age of 11 Graham’s mother abandoned him and he was taken in by a young nurse who helped raise him in North Carolina.  It wasn’t long before Graham began to excel athletically but he received a scholarship to the University of Miami to play basketball, not football.  After graduating from the U in 2009 with a double major Graham stayed back at Miami for another year  to take graduate level courses and play football.  After just a one year stint against college competition, the Saints GM Mickey Loomis and head coach Sean Payton  made Graham the 95^th player taken overall in the 2010 NFL Draft.

What did the Saints see in Graham?  At 6-foot-6, 260lbs. Graham is an athletic TE with great hands and a collegiate basketball background.  Sound familiar?  It should.

Since different offenses use TE’s differently and the Saints did not have a play making TE prior to Jeremy Shockey; it is important for us to focus on what the offense looked like since adding this type of weapon.  So how exactly did Sean Payton utilize the TE position since acquiring Shockey and Brees?  From our premium stats section we can see the following total snaps for TE’s during that time period:

2008: 1417

2009:  1434

2010:  1686

While it looks obvious that last year was an anomaly, I would say it was for good reason as the Saints offense suffered from many injuries to both the WR and RB positions’ leaving more pressure on the TE’s to pick up some of the slack.  Count on a regression in total snaps to be in the 1400 -1450 range.

The next step is to get an idea of how Brees involved the TE’s in the passing game over the same 3 year time period.  Here are the Target totals:

2008: 151

2009: 113

2010: 152

This is interesting because even though the Saints made a huge leap in total snaps for TE’s they reverted back to their 2008 target amount.  My guess would be that Brees settles somewhere in the 125-140 range this year for TE’s.  Of those targets, I would imagine that Graham sees between 70-85 total targets making him a viable part of the vaunted Saints air attack.

A quick breakdown of the Saints’ relevant TE’s in 2010:

Graham outplayed both Jeremy Shockey and Dave Thomas in virtually every statistical receiving category and I think he has earned the trust of his signal caller which is worth its weight in black and gold.

With the departure of Jeremy Shockey the Saints are counting on Jimmy Graham stepping right in and being that explosive playmaker at TE that they have lacked.  Brees tested Graham towards the end of last season and the rookie responded favorably by his excellent play.  The WR situation in New Orleans is a little unsettled as Marques Colston is having yet another lower body procedure and the door could be open for Graham to emerge as one of Brees’ favorite targets going forward.

Graham’s tumultuous background proves he’s a fighter who has faced a tremendous amount of adversity and rewarded his believers by performing with his back against the wall at every level.  With his young age, athletic ability and expanding role in a pass first offense with a top end quarterback Jimmy Graham’s dynasty stock is rising very quickly and he’s as good of a buy as any this offseason.