Over an offseason game of pop-a-shot, Andre Dillard tried to get to the bottom of Brandon Graham’s relentless positivity.
The two Eagles linemen finished their workouts around the same time last spring and converged at the mini-basketball hoops Nick Sirianni has added to the weight room.
Each of them joined the Eagles as a first-round pick with lofty expectations. Their careers had each gotten off to turbulent beginnings, and they both caught the ire of frustrated fans early on. Graham, 34, eventually shed his “bust” label to become a revered member of the organization and is in the final stretch of a career that will go down in Eagles history.
As he hoisted shots at his basket alongside Dillard, the Eagles left tackle wanted to know: Where does all that positive energy come from?
“I try to keep it as real as I can with myself,” Graham said, recounting what he said to Dillard that day. “I try not to let the situations have me up and down. I’ve been there, on a roller-coaster ride. When I first got here, that helped me a lot, too, because there were a lot of ups and downs. I was like, ‘I can’t keep living like this.’ It was eventually like, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ The worst has happened already. People labeled me this or labeled that. Whatever.”
Graham is going into his 13th year with the Eagles and is the longest-tenured member of the team, one year more than his running mate, defensive tackle Fletcher Cox. He’s one game away from tying Jon Dorenbos for the seventh-most games played in an Eagles uniform and could go as high as fourth if he plays the entire season.
Graham’s ascension into the Eagles record book was far from guaranteed, though. The former Michigan standout was nearly on the wrong side of cutdown day in 2014 after four seasons at the bottom of the depth chart. He heard the complaints about the Eagles’ decision to draft him over thriving players such as Earl Thomas and Jason Pierre-Paul, but he eventually turned his career around.
The experience helped shape Graham’s outlook. Now he wants it to shape his teammates’ as well, one pop-a-shot chat at a time.
“His positivity is an aura,” Dillard said. “It’s really contagious. I think it positively affects the people around him. That conversation really inspired me.”
Graham the leader
Every once in a while, Javon Hargrave will seek Graham out in need of a boost.
They have developed a close relationship since Hargrave signed with the Eagles in 2020, and sometimes, the 29-year-old uses Graham as a source of good vibes.
“He’ll be like, ‘Man, give me some of your positivity today,’” Graham said. “He’ll tell me the situation, and I’ll be like, ‘Look at it like this.’ Sometimes it works. Sometimes he’ll be like, ‘Nope, I ain’t ready for it yet. I’m still mad.’”
Hargrave considers himself a relatively shy person. It didn’t help that he joined the Eagles right before the pandemic forced the league to switch to virtual meetings and abbreviated offseason training schedules.
He kept to himself during an unproductive start to the year and didn’t meet some of his teammates face-to-face until months into the season. Still, he got to know Graham well enough to forge a meaningful bond.
“He just made it very welcoming,” Hargrave said. “I’m not a guy that just comes off and talks to everybody, but he made it kind of easy to talk to him.
“Anytime things are going wrong, he’s the one speaking that good energy in the air. In the game, when things aren’t going our way, that’s the person you lean on and talk to.”
Graham has been named as one of the Eagles’ captains for the fourth time in his career and is easily the most vocal team leader on and off the field. He has earned a reputation for nonstop trash talk on the field and can sometimes be heard bellowing out laughter in the locker room or during practice scuffles.
The approach he took with Hargrave isn’t reserved for high-priced free agents and top draft picks, though. He makes an effort to connect with anyone who joins the defensive line room.
“It’s all about trust,” Graham said. “I feel like the guys trust me, and I value that. ... I know as a rookie, coming in, a first-year guy, you get a lot of distractions that come your way. I just want to make sure that they get ahead because, once I see that they’ve got ability, it’s all about making sure your mind is clear.”
‘Mr. Eagle’
As he leans up against his locker-room stall, Graham’s eyes grow wide as he realizes the Eagles company he could join this season.
He could surpass Chuck Bednarik, Brent Celek, Tra Thomas, and Dorenbos to become fourth-all time in games played if he stays healthy this season. Another year would give him a chance at Harold Carmichael, Brian Dawkins, and David Akers, who holds the No. 1 spot with 188 games played.
The chance to surpass Carmichael elicits a “Whoa, boy,” from Graham, but he quickly pivots to another record on his mind.
“I’m going to try to not let Fletch beat my sack record,” said Graham, who has 59 career sacks to Cox’s 58. “We’re close. We’re in the 50s. I’m trying to get at least up to the 60s, hopefully the 70s before I get up out of here.”
Graham grew up admiring Baltimore Ravens legend Ray Lewis. His playing style appealed to Graham, but so did his ability to make such a lasting impact over nearly two decades with the same organization.
By the time Graham was labeled a bust going into his third season, Lewis had retired after 17 years with the Ravens. Graham dreamed of a similar path for himself, but it felt impossibly far away at the time.
Seventeen may be out of his reach, but Graham said his goal is to make it through 2023 in midnight green.
“I didn’t know it would turn out like this, the way that I’m doing it,” Graham said earlier this summer. “But now that I can kind of see some things, I’m like, ‘Man, just got to continue and keep your body right. If you don’t get there, that’s cool,’ but 15 was always my goal.
“I love that I’ve been only in one place. I’m trying to at least keep myself in the record books here. I’ve got one more year on my deal, I’m just going to enjoy it.”
While Graham grew up watching Lewis from afar, his current position coach had an up-close view. Jeremiah Washburn spent five years in the Ravens’ personnel department, from 2003 to 2008.
Washburn’s father, Jim, was Graham’s position coach during his first two seasons with the Eagles and was the one largely responsible for burying him on the depth chart, much to Graham’s frustration.
After “burying the hatchet” with the elder Washburn, Graham’s relationship with his son has come full circle. Enough so for Jeremiah Washburn to offer a comparison he’s uniquely qualified to make.
“Brandon Graham is in my all-time favorite people to coach,” he said. “He’s Mr. Eagle. But even behind closed doors — and I say this, I’ll be careful with comparison — I was in Baltimore as a young guy with Ray Lewis, and Ray Lewis was Ray Lewis behind the closed doors as much as in front of the cameras. And that’s what Brandon Graham is. Brandon Graham in the meeting room, the locker rooms, one-on-one, all those things.
“He’s always in tune. His energy’s palpable. The things he does for the rookie free agents, the people around the building, and he’s a productive player that shows up the same way. That’s why I love coaching him.”
‘He ain’t never had a bad day’
When Graham ruptured his Achilles last September, he feared the worst.
He was well-versed on the list of players who were never quite the same after the season-ending injury. Would this be the end?
By the time he got around his teammates during OTAs, his worries were quelled.
“That’s when I started saying, ‘I think I can do this,’” Graham said. “I didn’t think it was going to feel like that. It felt good. I knew it was weak at the time, but it was just going to keep getting stronger. It just built my confidence because all I was hearing was how bad this injury was.”
While watching Graham this summer, you’d be forgiven for letting it slip that he’s coming off such a significant injury. You might also forget he has been lining up against NFL offensive linemen since rookie defensive tackle Jordan Davis was still in grade school.
Graham isn’t a fixture in the starting defensive line like in years past, but he had a head-turning training camp working in with the first- and second-team defense.
“BG is, man, he’s running around like he’s in Year 5,” right tackle Lane Johnson said. “I don’t know what the [heck] he’s doing, but he ain’t never had a bad day.”
Graham said he had an emotional moment before the Eagles’ preseason opener against the New York Jets last month. Most veterans wouldn’t relish the exhibition games, but Graham found himself appreciating the little things: strapping on his shoulder pads, tying his cleats, the fleeting moments before kickoff.
“Being in that locker room, with that feeling you get right before you play a game,” Graham said of the emotion. “I used to be in that locker room just getting boys encouraged because I knew I wasn’t going to play until the following season. To be here now, I’m just enjoying the moment.”
Once the game started, Graham was eager to make a play. He had only a few opportunities before Sirianni pulled the veterans in favor of the second-teamers. He wanted to prove that he was all the way back.
On the fourth play of the Jets drive, Graham’s first in the game, he shed a block and tackled New York running back Breece Hall for no gain. It’s not often a preseason run stuff carries any deeper meaning for a player as established as Graham, but for him, it was a special moment.
“Being out for a year, it just makes you appreciate it even more,” Graham said.
Graham will have another surreal moment on Sunday. The games will count, for one, but he’ll also be returning to his hometown after missing the Eagles’ game in Detroit last season.
The former Crockett High School star said the experience of losing a close childhood friend from the Detroit area to violence helped reshape his priorities to where they are today.
“I lost some people in my life where it’s like, nothing else really mattered,” Graham said. “And I’ve seen people who let their emotions get the best of them and then some of them aren’t here because of a moment. So I’m always trying to find the positive in everything I can.”
“Every situation you can learn from. Even though I hate that I lost my boy, I try to learn from that situation.”
