Jimmy Graham has been one of the league’s best receiving threats around the goal line. Inside the 10 the last two years, they’ve thrown him 28 passes, and he’s caught 17 of those (including 15 for touchdowns). Now he’s taking those skills to Seattle.

So the question is, how much of that goal-line credit do we give to Graham? And how much goes to Drew Brees (and Sean Payton’s offensive design)? And looking forward, is it reasonable to expect that Russell Wilson can do a Brees-like job of getting the ball to Graham around the goal line.

So I started looking at the various numbers.

Wilson, as I think I posted earlier, was remarkably bad passing the ball around the goal line. Inside the 10, he was 13 of 26, with 7 TDs, 3 sacks and an interception. If you want to include the Super Bowl, you can add one more play to that pile – the interception at the end of that game.

So in the 2014 season, including the playoffs, Wilson attempted 30 pass plays inside the 10 and produced touchdowns on only 7 of those plays. Less than 25 percent. That was the lowest of all quarterbacks with at least 20 plays in that part of the field. Remarkable. A little behind Blake Bortles, Mark Sanchez, and 20 others.

With the Seahawks having lost their center (Max Unger) and left guard (James Carpenter), I think you can worry about opponents throwing blitzes at them in that part of the field with some success. Wilson was sacked on 5 of 29 pass plays in that part of the field the previous year. Over the last two years, he’s been the most-sacked quarterback inside the 10-yard line.

But prior to last year, Wilson was at least an effective passer inside the 10. He was a top-8 guy in touchdown percentage down there in each of his first two seasons.

But here’s where it gets a little interesting. If you set Jimmy Graham to the side, Drew Brees and Russell Wilson have been pretty similar – almost identical – inside the 10-yard line over the last two years.

Brees inside 10 (sans Graham) 2013-14
32 of 49, 18 touchdowns (6 sacks, 1 interception)
18 TDs in 55 plays = 32.7 percent

Wilson inside 10, 2013-14
27 of 50, 19 touchdowns (8 sacks, 2 interceptions)
19 TDs in 58 plays = 32.8 percent

I don’t think Jimmy Graham is going to hit it big in Seattle. I just don’t think they’ll use him as effective or in quite the same way. They don’t pass as much. But I thought the comparison was kind of interesting.

—Ian Allan