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Florham Park – Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham makes a ton of sense for the Jets with the 7th pick of the first round.
If he’s there, of course.
Jacksonville at 5 reportedly has a lot of interest.
We will see if he’s there when the Jets are on the clock, but if he is, he has to be a serious consideration for them.
And it sounds like he is.
We had Michigan football beat writer Aaron McMann on SiriusXM NFL Radio last Saturday on the show I do with Vic Carucci, and when he said, unsolicited, “I’m hearing from Michigan folks the Jets really like him a lot.”
McMann covers the Wolverines for MLive and the Ann Arbor News.
While picking defensive tackles isn’t sexy, the Jets need this guy.
Their run defense was a horror show the last couple of years.
“He was very much a run stopper last year,” McMann said.
NFL Network lead draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah loves Graham’s work against the run.
“Against the run, he has an impressive short-area burst to attack blockers,” Jeremiah wrote. “He excels in block destruction. He stacks, finds the ball, chucks blockers to the side and collects tackles.”
Jets desperately need somebody like this.
Over the last couple of years, their gap integrity against the run has been terrible. There were two glaring issues. First off, undersized defensive tackles were getting engulfed by offensive guards and centers who often outweighed them sometimes by 30-40 pounds. Also, since many of these defensive tackles were undersized, they were gap guessing off the snap, trying to beat offensive linemen off the snap, so they would avoid getting velcroed to blocks.
New Jets defensive line coach Eric Washington has a lot of work to do.
The way the Jets’ defensive line played the run the last couple of seasons was unacceptable.
The ends consistently did a bad job setting the edge, but we will get into that on another day.
The Jets need a new partner for Quinnen Williams inside, somebody who is a stout run defender, so Graham would be perfect.
An outstanding wrestler at Servite High School in Anaheim, California, Graham uses that background to his advantage, winning the leverage war against guards and centers.
He also played well in big games while at Michigan, including an outstanding performance in last year’s Wolverine upset over Ohio State.
The only concern with Graham is he’s not a massive space-eater, and some would argue the Jets need a redwood to line up next to Williams, who isn’t huge for a defensive tackle either. A guy more like that is actually Graham’s teammate, Kenneth Grant
“[Grant’s] a very dominant run defender,” Jeremiah said. “He easily holds the point of attack.”
But he is more of a late first, early second-round prospect. He is more of a raw prospect than Graham.
So if the Jets don’t pick Graham at 7, they can always keep their fingers crossed that Grant will be available at the top of Round 2.
The Jets’ new brass knows they need to fix the team’s interior run defense, which is why they stockpiled a bunch of defensive tackles in free agency – Derrick Nnadi, Byron Cowart and Jay Tufele.
But while those guys can help, they perhaps don’t have the talent level of Graham, so grabbing this skilled DT at 7 has to be a consideration.
And based on McMann’s reporting, they seem to be very interested.
April 22, 2025
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