Jimmy Graham soft? 'I still feel the same way,' says Seahawks teammate Michael Bennett

Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Michael Bennett derided tight end Jimmy Graham as being "soft" after beating the New Orleans Saints in a divisional playoff game in the 2013 playoffs.

Now that Graham has been traded to the Seahawks and is a new teammate, they're ready to patch things up, right?

Uh, maybe not.

In a radio interview on 710 ESPN in Seattle, Bennett didn't back down from his comments and said that Graham "would have to block" now that he's with the Seahawks.

"I still feel the same way," Bennett said, according to the Seattle Times. "Just because he's on my team I don't stop feeling that way. Obviously I'm going to be a better teammate to him because he's on my team. I can't do the things I was doing to him when we were playing him."

"But obviously when he comes to our team he's a part of our team so we have a different philosophy than they had with the Saints. So the things he was expected to do with the Saints are going to be different when he comes here.

"Obviously we are a running team, so he is going to have to block and do all those things. I don't feel as harsh as I did at the time because he's my teammate now but at the time he was on the opposite team and we battled with him a couple of times and I didn't really like that too much."

Bennett's original comments from more than a year ago are considerably more forceful.

"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."


(nola.com)