Being a top five pick in the NFL draft comes with outside expectations, and DT Mason Graham knows that.
He also knows what he wants to accomplish in his rookie season with the Browns and is aiming to help the team through playing sound football. In a few short months since he was drafted, he’s been working on living up to the billing.
“I have those expectations for myself. It’s just not people saying that about me,” Graham said. “I have those expectations for myself and I’m just trying to get better and, like I said, trying to make an impact in our first game.”
In the three months he’s been a Cleveland Brown, there’s a lot that Graham has had to learn in since walking across the stage in Green Bay in April, primarily with his defensive technique.
At Michigan, he played in a read and react style defense. Now, for Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, he’s playing an attack penetration defense. Graham has used the offseason to learn the new defensive scheme and is now shedding habits from Michigan to adjusting to his role with the Browns.
“I just feel like within the technique there’s little things like not stopping your feet,” Graham said. “A lot of times in the defense, you stop your feet on contact, brace for the double teams when you know you’re tight here to just keep running your feet nonstop. It’s really just the muscle memory.”
Even in the read and react style defense at Michigan, Graham’s skills jumped off the paper to defensive line coach Jacques Cesaire, who noticed what the California native was able to do within the scheme.
“When you see a guy start penetrating (the offensive line) and he’s in a read scheme and he’s penetrating the line of scrimmage – and I’m not talking one yard, I’m talking about three, four, five yards in the backfield – getting tackles for losses or setting other people up to make play, that’s when you’re like, this kid can do what we’re going to ask him to do,” Cesaire said.