LOS ANGELES — Doug Baldwin and Pete Carroll had the same reaction you did to Jimmy Graham’s first touchdown of the season.
“Finally,” Baldwin said.
It was not just that Graham finally scored in the fifth game of his contract season Sunday, but how the star tight end and Russell Wilson connected in the first half to begin the Seahawks’ comeback from a 10-point deficit that eventually turned into a 16-10 win over the Los Angeles Rams.
For three seasons, it hasn’t taken a scientist to see the 6-foot-7 Graham, a college basketball power forward and shot blocker at Miami, has a decisive height advantage near the goal line against every cover man in the NFL. None are 6-7.
Yet for three seasons, the Seahawks have not taken advantage — or at least not nearly enough as they expected to when they traded two-time Pro Bowl center Max Unger and a first-round pick to New Orleans in the spring of 2015 for the league’s most prolific pass-catching tight end.
Graham had 46 touchdown receptions in his final four years with Drew Brees and the Saints. He had eight in three seasons with Seattle entering Sunday’s game.
When the Seahawks got to the 7-yard line in the second quarter while down 10-0, play caller Darrell Bevell sent Graham where many believe he always should be in the red zone: Outside, wide left, matched up man-to-man with 6-foot Rams safety John Johnson.
Then Wilson did what all of the Northwest has been begging for him to do over these three seasons. He took the snap, then just one step and lofted a simple pass that Graham could easily snag well above the helpless defender.
Easy touchdown. Seahawks back in the game.
“Well, first and foremost I want to say ‘Finally,” Baldwin said. “Why was it a good throw? Because Jimmy is six foot seven, 280 pounds. I know that it’s football, there’s a lot of Xs and Os, there’s a lot of strategy behind it. But sometimes it just doesn’t get any more simple than that.
“He’s 6 feet 7. Throw the ball up to him. You don’t even have to throw it. Just underhand toss it over the there. He’s going to go up and get it.”
Well, sometimes.
Wilson had tried to do that in the opener at Green Bay last month, but it was on one of his constant scrambles for his life. His pass had too much momentum behind it and sailed well over Graham’s head out of the back of the end zone incomplete, an opportunity lost in a 17-9 defeat.
Wilson is notoriously averse to taking risks with the ball. That trait is what made Carroll fall in love with the rookie third-round pick in 2012.
But last November against Buffalo, Wilson threw twice at the goal line to Graham even though he had a Buffalo Bills defender hanging on his arm. Graham caught both for his only two-touchdown game as a Seahawk.
“We just kept it simple and just went up and got it,” Wilson said of this TD to Graham on Sunday.
Graham had a game-high six receptions, but for just 37 yards. Once again he did not talk to the media following the game.
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