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Preview · Steelers at Browns · Week 4

Half a sack as a rookie. Four in three games now. Mason Graham is the Browns' pass rush.

Cleveland traded away the NFL's single-season sack leader in June, and the rush didn't leave with him. We say the second-year tackle gets to Aaron Rodgers on Thursday night.

· 3 min read

By XOCP · Written with AI assistance · Edited by Joe Ybarra

The calls, graded

  1. MissMason Graham records at least half a sack.0 sacks. Graham hurt his left knee in the first quarter and did not return; the box score has no defensive stats for him.
The film · 41 seconds. Motion graphics and synthesized score by XOCP.
Mason Graham in a Michigan uniform, No. 55, celebrating a play.
Mason Graham at Michigan in 2023, two years before Cleveland drafted him. Photo: Maize & Blue Nation · CC BY 2.0, resized

The year the numbers didn't come

Cleveland took Mason Graham fifth overall in 2025. He started all 17 games as a rookie and played 72 percent of the defensive snaps. He finished with half a sack, 4 quarterback hits and 7 tackles for loss.

“(I hope to) make more plays, play a lot of snaps and then be one of the anchors of this defense,” he told the team's website before the season.

Four sacks in three games

He has done it faster than anyone could have planned. Graham had a sack at Jacksonville, a sack at Tampa Bay, and two against Carolina. That is 4 sacks, 5 quarterback hits and 6 tackles for loss in three games: already more hits than his whole rookie season, one tackle for loss short of it, and eight times the sacks.

Cleveland is 2-1, and the two wins, 23-19 and 21-18, were each decided by four points or fewer.

The man he is replacing, sort of

In June the Browns traded Myles Garrett to the Rams, coming off what NFL.com called a record-setting 23-sack season. They got edge rusher Jared Verse, a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 second and a 2029 third. Nobody replaces 23 sacks one-for-one, but Graham is on the way: 4 sacks in three games is a 17-game pace of 22.7, within half a sack of Garrett's record. Nobody else on the roster has more than 1.

The Browns' stadium in Cleveland during a game against the Steelers.
Cleveland's lakefront stadium during a Browns-Steelers game in 2014. Photo: Erik Drost (resized) · CC BY 2.0, resized

Why Thursday

Pittsburgh is a 2.5-point favorite. Aaron Rodgers has been sacked 8 times in three games, 4 of them in the loss at New England. An interior rusher's route to a quarterback runs straight through the guards and center, and that is where Graham lines up.

The case against: Rodgers can get the ball out quickly when he wants to, and a tackle with four sacks in three games will see more double teams now that the tape is out.

The call

One call, graded in public after the game: Mason Graham records at least half a sack.

Sources

  1. Weekly player statistics, nflverse
  2. Mason Graham looks to anchor the Browns defense in 2026 (clevelandbrowns.com)
  3. Browns trade Myles Garrett to Rams (NFL.com)
  4. Spreads via The Odds API

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