Jimmy Graham Madden Career 2011-2022 - Peak 97 OVR

Jimmy Graham was born on November 24, 1986 in North Carolina. He played four seasons of basketball at Miami and a single season of football, in 2009, catching 17 passes. New Orleans drafted him in the third round in 2010, 95th overall, and Madden NFL 11 rated him 64.

He caught 99 passes for 1,310 yards in 2011, the first 1,000-yard receiving season by a Saints tight end, and 86 for 1,215 yards and a league-leading 16 touchdowns in 2013, when he was a first-team All-Pro. Madden NFL 13 had already moved him to 95, and Madden NFL 15 reached 97, his career high. In July 2014 an arbitrator ruled he counted as a tight end rather than a receiver for franchise-tag purposes, and he signed a four-year, $40 million contract.

New Orleans traded him to Seattle in March 2015 for Max Unger and a first-round pick. He tore a patellar tendon that November against Pittsburgh. He played on in Green Bay and Chicago as the rating settled at 78, sat out 2022, and returned to New Orleans in 2023 to catch six passes, four of them touchdowns. He retired as a Saint on July 22, 2025 with 719 receptions, 8,545 yards and 89 touchdowns. Eight days earlier he had finished rowing 584 nautical miles across the Arctic Ocean, from Tromso, Norway to Svalbard, in a crew of four.