Five players to watch for Packers Week 14 vs. Falcons
By Jesse Fry
4. Jimmy Graham
The Falcons have fast and athletic linebackers. Deion Jones, Duke Riley and De’Vondre Campbell were drafted to handle players just like Jimmy Graham.
If Graham would like to show the Packers and the world he’s not washed up, this is the game and these are the players to do it against.
The Falcons are likely to let one of their three athletic linebackers match up against Graham one-on-one to see if he can beat them. If he can’t, that leaves the Falcons with more resources to stop Davante Adams.
One of McCarthy’s failures this season was not properly using Graham in the red zone. While Graham may have lost some speed, he did not lose any inches off his six-foot-seven frame. Graham has a large body to shield defenders from the ball and the height to out-jump them. Yet he was seldom put into positions to make this type of play.
Joe Philbin would be doing the Packers a solid favor if he can show the team what Graham has left to offer over the next few games by using him in ways the Packers haven’t yet.
The Packers invested a lot of money in Graham this past offseason and have a decision to make on whether or not they’d like to keep him around. They will have the cap space to keep him and the dead money would be over $7 million, according to Spotrac, if they decide to cut him, only gaining just over $3 million in cap space for 2019.
It would be best for both the player and the team to see if they can get one more serviceable year out of Graham before parting ways. The audition to see if that can happen starts Sunday.