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Jake Trotter
As a first year student In Servite High School in Anaheim, California, Mason Graham lived too far to go home between the end of the class and the beginning of the afternoon basketball practice. Then, Servite’s football coach Troy Thomas convinced Graham to use that free time by joining the wrestling team, which he practiced in the afternoon.
That decision put Graham on a way to make history next month in a different sport, when it is likely to become Michigan’s first defensive Tackle to go in the NFL Draft Top 10.
Graham might not have the traditional physical profile of an elite defensive Tackle. In the NFL Combine, its arm length measured only 32 inches, which placed it in the 12th percentile between the defensive Tackle prospects of this century.
However, NFL teams do not seem worried about the length of their arms. They are focused on what they do with them.
“It is worth noting short arms, but realistically only in relation to whether it appears on the tape,” said an AFC explorer. “If a player with short arms constantly allows his chest to be attacked or frequently stuck in blocks, then the short arms are a great concern. That is not the case here. Graham is a very disruptive player.”
That dates back to Servite’s wrestling room, where Graham became a fierce and twice a heavyweight fighter twice with the conference, perfecting the skills that would define him in the trenches: leverage, technique, hardness, approach and pure will.
“You see it now in your game,” Thomas said. “The way it moves and addresses: you can see all that when it plays.”
Despite his short arms, Graham emerged as the most physically dominant defensive Tackle in university football last season, obtaining honors all unanimous American. According to ESPN Research, Michigan delivered 4.6 yards per play when Graham was in the field last year and 5.4 When he was off the field. The numbers were even more pronounced in the race game, where the Wolverines allowed 2.6 yards per race with Graham and 3.9 Sin.
In his last university game, Graham destroyed the high -power offensive of the eventual national champions. While connected the medium, Graham led the load when closing the hasty attacks of Ohio State. He also registered seven cups in his career as a Michigan, a loser of three touchdown, surprised the 13-10 buckey for his fourth consecutive victory in the rivalry.
“He only physically [controlled] All that offensive line, “said the defensive coordinator of the Wolverines, Wink Martindale, who trained almost two decades in the NFL before joining the Wolverines last year.” You can definitely say your history of struggle with the way it plays due to its balance. He knows how to use his hands better than many players in the league at this time. “
Graham is now prepared to become a defensive cornerstone for which the NFL team writes it. Other NFL defensive cup with similar arm measurements have still prospered. The former defensive Tackle of the Cincinnati Bengals, Geno Atkins, was a professional bowling player despite having 32 -inch weapons. The Ed Oliver defensive Tackle.
For any questions that Doube, Graham has an answer: look at the tape.
“I feel that I just display the state of the state of Ohio,” Graham said in The Combine. “That’s all you need to see, really.”
When Graham wasn’t Fight during football casualties, worked up to four times a week with defensive line coach Servite Kelly Talavou, a former defensive liner of the Baltimore Ravens. In a local park with some teammates, they drilled hands placement, pad level, block recognition and pass technique, sometimes for two hours at the same time.
Graham went further during the season. He studied so much film that he could often predict what game only from the position or inclination of an offensive liner came.
“The arm length does not matter with him because he works very hard and is very intelligent,” Talavou said. “He is such an instinctive player … sees the play before it happens.”
That happened during the Michigan National Championship race two years ago, when he delivered one of the biggest defensive plays in the history of the program.
In the semifinal of American football playoffs at the Rose Bowl against Alabama, in the second and goal in extra time, Graham aligned opposed the Guard Crimson Tide Tyler Booker, also a projected selection of first round. With a sudden and fast movement, Graham joined the field just when the corridor Jase McClellan took the transfer and hit him in the grass for a loss of 5 yards.
Two plays later, Michigan stopped Alabama in the fourth Down and advanced to the CFP title game. Alabama coach Nick Saban said that Graham “gave us attacks” and called him “dominant.”
Thomas’s son, Houston, who fought and played football with Graham en Servite, immediately saw the fighting connection with the stop in extra time.
“You see how you get out of the blocks and fly there to make cup,” he said. “Those fighting positions definitely helped him form it in the [player] that he is. “
Despite its clear Potential, Graham was greatly overlooked in high school. Covid-19 deleted much of its junior season, limiting the film and the exhibition of the game. It remained a three -star recruit, even though I was already in the treasury in a star.
Two of his teammates Servite, Campo Marshal Noah Fifita and the open receptor Tetaira McMillan, both committed to Arizona. Fifita’s father, tried that the Wildcats also risk Graham.
“All who would listen to, we were telling them,” he said. “He was unlockable.”
Boise State offered, and Graham was initially committed. But the then general manager of Michigan Courtney Morgan and the then defensive line coach Shaun Nua held tabs. Only a couple of games in his last year, convinced him to turn.
Graham registered early in Michigan and jumped his last semester of high school. Many in Servite believed that if it had stayed, it could have been one of the best heavyweight fighters in the state.
At that time, Graham wasn’t sure how wrestling would help his football career. Now? He taught “how to overcome the other person” one by one, he said.
It could be said that no one in this draft makes it better, regardless of the length of the arm.
“I feel that every click, career or step,” said Graham. “I feel that I am a dominant player, one of the most dominant players of this class.”
ESPN NFL Mike Reiss reporter contributed to this story
