Jimmy Graham is going to find his early days with his new Seattle Seahawks teammates pretty awkward. It was no secret Seahawks players didn’t like him after he was running his mouth prior to a playoff matchup between the Saints and Hawks. Graham is pretty much the best tight end in the NFL so you would think the issues between the players would die down since Graham is now a Seahawk after being traded by the Saints, but it appears that is not the case.
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For one, linebacker Bruce Irvin has been tweeting that he wants to fight Graham. Now, Graham is also going to have to deal with Michael Bennett, who doesn’t have a very high opinion of the former Saints tight end.
After the Seahawks beat the Saints in the playoffs following the 2013 season, Bennett called Graham “one of the softest players” in the NFL. In an interview with KIRO-AM in Seattle on Thursday, Bennett was asked if he still stands by his comments. “I still feel the same way,” Bennett said. “Just because he’s on my team I don’t stop feeling that way.”
“Nobody likes Jimmy Graham. I think he’s one of the softest players in the NFL,” Bennett said at the time. “I think he’s overrated and I really don’t like him as a person or as a player… When he’s not in the game he’s not in the game. He doesn’t help on the blocking plays. I think he’s just overrated.”
Although Bennett is standing by his comments, he did say on Thursday that he’ll try and be a good teammate.
The dislike stems from that January 2014 playoff game. A group of Seahawks players almost got in fight with Graham because Graham was warming up in Seattle’s territory and wouldn’t leave after the players asked him.
“He was warming up in our area and I asked him to move, and he said, ‘I’m Jimmy.’ So I knocked the ball out of his hand and I kicked it across the field,” Irvin said in January 2014. “So that’s how it started. That’s how it started.”
Now they have to learn to hug it out and move on.
