BEREA — The most memorable moment of Mason Graham’s first month with the Cleveland Browns happened on the field. It was more about an upset stomach, though, than the former Michigan defensive tackle upsetting the offense.
However, in that moment at rookie minicamp, the No. 5 overall pick in the draft gained a huge fan — his position coach.
“The thing I love about Mason, right, I think everybody heard he ate a little bit too much and he threw up that first day,” Browns defensive line coach Jacques Cesaire said during minicamp June 12. “But what a lot of people are not talking about is that the kid finished, OK? He went back out there, puke and all, and finished the rep.”
That wasn’t the love-at-first-sight moment for Cesaire when it came to the 6-foot-4, 315-pound Graham. That moment came the first time he sat down to start studying the 2025 defensive tackle draft class, a year before he was even eligible for the NFL before the 2024 draft.
At that time, Graham was coming off a sophomore season for the eventual national champion Wolverines in which he earned second-team All-America honors. Cesaire admits he thought he had found a gem, until he went to tell the Browns’ scouting department.
“I remember telling our guys, ‘There’s a kid at Michigan right now that that guy can move and he has a lot of rush moves and he has strong hands and we got to take a look at him,’ and our guys were already on it,” Cesaire said. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, we know.’ And as you start watching tape, watching tape, watching tape, you just start really liking a guy more and more and more and more and just start fitting the pieces together like, oh man, if he was on this side playing with this guy, imagine what he could do.”
That’s been part of the process for, first, the Browns during the draft process, and Graham now that he’s with the team. It’s been about imagining what he could do in the attacking defensive scheme that coordinator Jim Schwartz runs.
Michigan’s scheme is read-and-react, with defensive tackles like Graham being asked to take up blocks so others can make the play. The Browns scheme asks defensive tackles like him to go make the play.
“It’s been an adjustment for him just because the style of play, reading blocks and, like you said, protecting linebackers and things like that,” Schwartz said on June 4. “You know, that’s not what we do. … I do think there’s a lot of meat on the bone as far as his production, and we can see better production from him than even we saw, and he had outstanding production in college.”
Graham spoke of those schematic differences while he was at rookie minicamp on May 9. That’s when he talked about how Cesaire told him about “taking the handcuffs off. I feel like maybe in the scheme I was playing in before, I might’ve had handcuffs [on], moving more laterally.”
The selling point for Cesaire were the plays Graham was able to make while wearing those “handcuffs.” In his three-year Michigan career, he recorded nine sacks and 18 tackles for loss, including 3.5 sacks and seven tackles for loss, plus three quarterback hurries, in his final season.
For the former NFL defensive lineman-turned-defensive line coach, those plays were the clues that unlocked the rest of the picture for how Graham fit in the Browns scheme.
“There’s not a lot of attack teams in college football,” Cesaire said. “But when you see a guy start penetrating and he’s in a read scheme and he’s penetrating the line of scrimmage — I’m not talking about one yard; I’m talking about three, four, five yards in the backfield, getting tackles for losses or setting other people up to make plays — that’s when you’re like, ‘OK, this kid can do what we’re going to ask him to do.'”
The next step will come in training camp. That’s when the rookie will put on the equipment and have to really face NFL offensive linemen in true full-contact drills for the first time.
That will mean, for an interior defensive linemen like Graham, daily training camp battles against guards like borderline Hall of Famer Joel Bitonio or multi-time Pro Bowler Wyatt Teller. That doesn’t even include joint practices against the Carolina Panthers — with veteran interior linemen Austin Corbett and former Pro Bowler Robert Hunt — or the Philadelphia Eagles and their star-studded interior with Pro Bowlers Cam Jurgens and Landon Dickerson.
“There has been some growing pains,” Schwartz said. “He’s pretty far ahead right now. When we get pads on, that’ll be the next step. And then when you go live contact, that’ll be a next step. So it’ll be a process for him.”
Graham could find himself getting his lunch handed to him a few times in those kind of matchups. Still, it was his ability to lose his lunch and still finish the job that endeared him to his own position coach.
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Mason Graham, ‘puke and all,’ endearing himself to Browns coaches with ability to finish
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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