‘Grace and tenacity’: Behind Brandon Graham’s longevity with the Eagles is Carlyne guiding the journey

Carlyne Graham didn’t initially think all that much of the boy whom she met through a friend while he toured her high school, Detroit Crockett, as a prospective student more than 20 years ago. The boy, two years her junior, was named Brandon Graham.

They started off as acquaintances, and when Carlyne eventually moved to Chicago to pursue a degree in child and family law and a master’s in social work at Loyola University, Brandon would reach out over Facebook to check in and praise her accomplishments while he played college football at Michigan. After years of talking while living in separate states and “kind of dating,” Carlyne said she moved to Philadelphia after graduation in 2012 and began dating Brandon in earnest. He proposed in 2013, his fourth season with the Eagles, and the couple got married the following year.

Now, whenever the Grahams return to Detroit for community events, his high school football coach and his guidance counselors like to remind them that Brandon had planned to marry Carlyne ever since he met her on that tour. Carlyne knew nothing of that early intention. Still, the initial revelation didn’t shock her.

“When Brandon says he wants something, or he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it,” Carlyne explained to The Inquirer.

As he pursued a career in football, Graham possessed that same sense of determination. The 6-foot-2, 265-pound defensive end was a five-star recruit out of Crockett, a two-year starter and two-time captain at Michigan, the Eagles’ 13th overall pick in the 2010 draft, and a Super Bowl LII champion.

In his 14th season with the Eagles, Graham is on the cusp of adding another bullet point to his list of accolades. On Sunday against the Buffalo Bills, Graham will set the franchise record for games played with 189, breaking the previous high established by kicker David Akers from 1999-2010.

But while Carlyne praises the “power of Brandon’s tongue” and his ability to manifest aspirations into reality, Brandon said he wouldn’t have envisioned 14 seasons and 189 games with the Eagles at the bumpy outset of his NFL career. Fortunately for Brandon, his tongue always had a willing listener along the way.

“When it wasn’t going so good, she was the ear,” Brandon said.

When Carlyne and Brandon first started talking while he played at Michigan, she wasn’t too familiar with football and his success. She’d support his passion for the sport in their phone conversations, all the while asking him about his backup plan if a professional career never came to fruition.

It wasn’t until Brandon invited Carlyne to his draft party in 2010 at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Mich., that she grasped the scope of his potential. He hosted the party close to home after injuring his hamstring at the scouting combine, preferring not to travel to New York, the draft site, in case he fell out of the first round.

Still, hordes of television cameras clamored for shots of Brandon at the party, prompting Carlyne to slink to the back of the room and run a Google search of his name on her phone. 2009 All-Big Ten first team. 2008 and 2009 Michigan team MVP. 2010 Senior Bowl MVP.

“He spoke very highly of football, but he was so humble,” she said.

But the success Graham had in college didn’t immediately translate to his professional career with the Eagles, who traded up 11 spots to select him in the first round. Coach Andy Reid named Graham a starter at defensive end alongside Trent Cole in 2010. Graham recorded just three sacks in 13 games, then tore his ACL in the Eagles’ 30-27 win over the Dallas Cowboys to knock him out for the rest of the season.

After recovering from the torn ACL and microfracture surgery, Graham returned to action in Week 9 the following season. However, he only ended up playing two more games before the Eagles finished 8-8 and missed the playoffs.

At that point, questions surrounding Graham’s viability as an NFL starter started to percolate among the media and the fanbase. They noted that New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, selected two spots ahead of Graham, had developed into one of the league’s best players when he recorded 21 sacks in his first two seasons. They started toying with the term “bust” as it related to Graham.

It wasn’t just his physical health that had taken a hit to that point. Carlyne noticed that Brandon was struggling mentally, too.

“He didn’t want to play anymore because he thought it was going to be a smooth transition for him and it wasn’t,” Carlyne said. “So I would just always just talk him off the ledge. There’s a reason why things are slowing down for you, you have to figure out what it is that you have to sit still for.”

Carlyne was uniquely qualified to be a sounding board for Brandon. She came from humble beginnings as an adoptee, and while Brandon said “it wasn’t such a good situation,” Carlyne was determined to chart her own path and be successful in her own right. While obtaining her degrees, she became well-versed in mental health education, which helped influence how she communicated with Brandon.

Their discussions prompted Graham to tap into the veterans around him, including Cole, for guidance as he navigated his transition to the pro game. He learned how to take care of his body properly while also limiting his exposure to the noise on social media, a space that had recently become more ubiquitous.

“During them tough times, she was the one that really just kind of talked sense back into me on some stuff,” Graham said. “And then eventually things flipped where I was more sound at not always going with ... being able to control your emotions. And so I had to learn that.”

At the end of his rookie contract in 2015, Graham had two options in hand — a one-year, prove-it deal with the New York Giants or a four-year contract with the Eagles, which wasn’t as lucrative as he’d hoped, but provided some security for a young couple looking to put down roots and start a family.

Graham said he was mad at the Eagles at the time, but Carlyne helped him make the decision with his head instead of his heart. Plus, after an injury-plagued start, Graham was slowly starting to find his footing on the team under head coach Chip Kelly, who was hired in 2013. Graham sensed that the fanbase was starting to come around, too.

“I honestly don’t think he wanted to offend the Philadelphia fans,” Carlyne said. “He knows that once you jump ship, it’s not a good look. And Brandon is a very loyal person, regardless of what came with it, and what came with the fan base, and how a lot of them negatively said certain things to him.

“His goal was to always, I would love to be on the same team and retire on the same team that I had got drafted. That was always a big goal for him. So I was like, all right, well, here we go. It may not be the numbers that you want, or that you were expecting, but it’s an opportunity to possibly get to there.”

That season, Graham started 10 games and posted career highs in sacks (6.5) and tackles (51) while generating three forced fumbles. Finally, he was starting to feel physically and mentally like himself again while earning the snaps he always wanted. He played like he had something to prove.

It wasn’t until the Eagles hired Doug Pederson as head coach in 2016 and Jim Schwartz as defensive coordinator that Graham truly blossomed. Carlyne called Pederson and Schwartz his “saving grace.” Graham knew Schwartz from his head coaching gig at the Senior Bowl. Leading up to the game, Graham said that Schwartz made a bet with his staff that the defensive end would earn MVP honors just based on his performance in practices alone, a sense of belief that meant the world to Graham.

That preexisting relationship combined with Schwartz’s 4-3 scheme with a wide-9 defensive front allowed Graham to show his gifts a little bit more as a pass rusher. He said he didn’t have to think as hard while he played, too, all the while moving from the left to the right side in 2017. That year, Graham set a new career high in sacks (9.5) as a second-year, full-time starter.

His best season to date culminated in a trip to the Super Bowl to face quarterback Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. With two minutes, 16 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter as the Patriots were attempting a comeback, Graham strip-sacked Brady and defensive end Derek Barnett recovered the loose ball to help seal the title win for the Eagles.

“It was like he was giving a gift back to Philly,” Carlyne said. “He was showing them, all you had to do is just believe in me. I’m a hard worker, just like all of Philadelphians that are here. Y’all are hard workers, I’m a hard worker. Nothing was ever given to him.

“That was something that he was so incredibly grateful to be a part of, to have that moment and to be able to do that for him. It was probably one of the best experiences that we could have had as a family altogether.”

Graham continued to face challenges, tearing his Achilles in Week 2 of the 2021 season to bring his year to a premature end. But at 33 years old, Graham was better equipped mentally to handle the injury than he did more than a decade earlier when he tore his ACL.

“He just embraced it a totally different way,” Carlyne said. “He knew, ‘This is just a part of my story, this is something that I have to go through. It allows me to have more time with you guys, I have the season off. I can be more a part of the family, I can do things, I can help you.’ So his approach, it wasn’t more so like, ‘Woe is me.’ It was like, ‘OK, this is happening, and I just have to come back and crawl my way out of it like I did before.’ And he did it with so much grace and tenacity.”

» READ MORE: The power of positivity lifts Brandon Graham — and the Eagles look to emulate his good energy

The following season, Graham returned to action and set a new career high in sacks (11.5), despite the fact that he was no longer a starter. He finished fourth in voting for the Associated Press comeback player of the year award. Most importantly, he served as an inspiration to his younger teammates for his perseverance through adversity while maintaining the trademark smile on his face.

Second-year defensive tackle Jordan Davis said Graham’s upbeat energy makes tough days a little brighter. Rookie defensive tackle Moro Ojomo added that Graham makes everyone feel known and loved, signs of respect that help welcome newcomers to the team. Longtime teammate Fletcher Cox pointed out that Graham is “never having a bad day.”

» READ MORE: The ‘Core Four’ are more than the Eagles’ foundation. BG, Fletch, Kelce, and Lane are thriving.

Graham’s upcoming milestone isn’t just his to celebrate on his own. His teammates, especially the young defensive linemen, view the record and the attitude with which he achieved it as something to strive toward.

“It’s inspiring, because it’s like, man, maybe that can be me if I’m blessed to play enough and I’m blessed to play that long,” Davis said. “I just look at BG, man. He’s had tons of experience. He’s been here his whole career. So his life is based in Philly. He’s not a Philly native, but he’s true to Philly. So just seeing that, man, I just want to be one of those people.

“I idolize him. He’s a good guy. He’s a great dude. He’s a family man. That’s everything that I want to be.”

But the road doesn’t end with 189 games. Brandon said he’s “smiling on the inside” about his record while acknowledging there’s work left to be done this season, the 9-1 Eagles eying a return to the Super Bowl. Plus, Carlyne pointed out that Brandon “isn’t fully done yet” with his football career, aiming to play “a couple more years.”

At this point in his life, however, football is just one aspect of his identity. Brandon completed his degree in sports management from Michigan in the offseason. He and Carlyne remain each other’s biggest cheerleaders, and now, they have two children, Emerson and Bryson, rooting them on, too.

“I can tell him that I want to be the next Picasso, and he’s going to say, ‘All right, well, let’s figure out what we need to do,’” Carlyne said. “There’s always a positive attribute that he’s going to always say, ‘We can do it, no matter what. If that’s something that you want to do, we’re going to do it, and we’re going to accomplish it.’

“That’s just who he is as a person.”

The Eagles host the Buffalo Bills on Sunday. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest story lines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.