Mason Graham is one of the best football players in the country, even being mocked as the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. The rising junior was the defensive player of the game in Michigan’s Rose Bowl win over Alabama, highlighted by a massive tackle for loss in overtime against the Crimson Tide.
A second-team All-American in 2023, he was named All-Big Ten first team by the coaches and garnered freshman All-American awards in 2022.
Graham was also one of 12 players to earn Big Ten preseason honors. In early August, the California native went on Pro Football Focus’ College Football Show last week and talked about his road to Ann Arbor, his wrestling background, and playing alongside Kenneth Grant.
Check out our recap of what he said during the interview. 👇
The Recruiting Process
In July of 2021, Graham was committed to the Boise State football program with his other biggest scholarship offer coming from Oregon State. It wasn’t until the start of his senior season that Michigan, and other big-time programs took notice of his potential.
“During high school, I wasn’t really heavily recruited,” “Going into my senior year, I was committed to Boise State. I really didn’t have many power 5 offers, mostly just Mountain West schools looking at me.”
“After a few games of my senior year, everyone started noticing that I was a good player and started recruiting me pretty late. But it really came down to [USC, Oregon and Michigan].”
Michigan got Graham to take an official visit for the Washington game in 2021, showing him a raucous Big House environment for the 31-10 victory over the Huskies and a dominant defensive performance under the lights.
“I came on my visit to Michigan and it was kind of history,” he told PFF. “I came to the Washington maize-out. It was great seeing a great atmosphere. And it has the best academics and the best athletics.”
Wrestling Roots
Before Graham was a standout defensive lineman and projected top-5 pick for Michigan, he was a multi-sport athlete at Servite High School in Anaheim, California, excelling both on the gridiron and on the wrestling mat.
“I just started my freshman year of high school. It kind of goes along with my head coach’s ideology of he wants his players not just to play football, he wants them to get into other sports,” Graham told the PFF College Football Show. “It’s good for, you know, offseason conditioning or in my position, wrestling’s good for linemen and conditioning, too.”
Michigan has had success with former wrestlers playing defensive tackle, as Mike Martin was a standout in Ann Arbor from 2008-2011 after winning back-to-back state championships his junior and senior year at Catholic Central. Martin would be drafted in the 3rd round by the Tennessee Titans in 2012.
Similar to Martin, who picked up wrestling right before his junior year, Graham picked up the sport later than most. While he didn’t have the success in high school that Martin did, he was extremely competitive in one of the best high school conferences in California. Graham won the heavyweight individual Trinity League championship as a sophomore and helped Servite win the Trinity League team championship as a junior, before missing out on his senior year to enroll early at Michigan.
“I did it for fun. I would show up on the mat, I didn’t really have much technique. I won league a few times, placed in CIF (California Interscholastic Federation), went to the state tournament,” Graham says. “I was decent, but I wouldn’t say I was the state champion. I didn’t do any of that stuff.”
Playing with Kenneth Grant
In addition to Graham, Michigan’s Kenneth Grant is earning praise as one of the best interior defensive linemen in the country, and the two classmates make up the best defensive tackle duo in college football.
“It’s like a peanut butter and jelly. We kind of just go together. We work off each other, we know our strengths and weaknesses.” He told PFF. “When we’re both on the inside they can’t really focus all the attention on just one of us.”
“It’s not just me and Kenneth that make this defense run, ” Graham added. “It’s really everyone,“The edges. We have explosive linebackers.”
Despite losing numerous members of the 2023 unit to the NFL, Michigan could have yet another top-5 defensive in the country in 2024 on the backs of Graham and Grant under new defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, who joins Michigan’s coaching staff after serving as defensive coordinator for the New York Giants and Baltimore Ravens over the last several years.
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