Tag: Kenneth Grant

Kenneth Grant and Mason Graham: Michigan’s dynamic DT duo in the 2025 NFL Draft

Kenneth Grant and Mason Graham: Breaking down Michigan’s dynamic DT duo in the 2025 NFL Draft

The Michigan Wolverines weren’t able to repeat as national champions in 2024 after their majestic triumph in the 2023 College Football Playoff. Don’t blame the interior defensive line tandem of Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant.

Grant and Graham were almost inarguably the best defensive tackle combination in the nation. And with Grant’s recent pronouncement that he’s jumping to the NFL, there’s a conversation to be had about which is the better pro prospect of the two heavyweights.

As the “smaller” attacking tackle of the tandem, it’s easy to see Graham’s considerable upside. He’s ideally built for a 1-to-3 technique at 6-foot-3 and 320 listed pounds, with quick feet and a very powerful upper body. Graham played extensively as a true freshman and has continued to be one of the most effective interior pressure generators in college football. The sack totals aren’t gaudy, but a lot of what Graham does as a pass rusher is facilitating sacks from the outside rushers. Any questions about his run defense should be referred to Indiana or Ohio State, and they’re quickly answered with dominant performances against playoff teams.

Grant primarily played the nose tackle, but he and Graham have similar NFL positional potential. The 21-year-old Grant has dropped his weight down into the 335-pound range after arriving on campus at almost 370. He moves more like a 270-pounder with impressive lateral speed. He might be the best defensive lineman in the nation at getting his hands into passing lanes, and not just to get deflections but also erase throwing options.

Right now, Graham carries the higher draft profile. He’s almost universally projected in the first half of the first round, often in the first handful of picks. Grant tends to earn projections in the 20-40 overall range, though he’s shown upward mobility. Grant might appeal more highly to teams running an odd-man base front, but that remains to be seen. He’s got more of an “immovable object” style than Graham, who calls upon his wrestling background to torque off blockers more adeptly.

The two Wolverine teammates are tightly bonded. Reuniting them in the NFL seems a pipe dream, but Graham and Grant have effectively served as the NCAA version of Vince Wilfork and Richard Seymour for the last two-plus years at Michigan. Expect both to wind up being first-round picks who can be expected to play significant snaps right away.

Michigan football DT Kenneth Grant makes NFL draft decision

There’s been buzz either way. #GoBlue

Michigan football may have gone 7-5 this past season but it was rife with talent — particularly on the defensive side of the ball. But even with multiple stars declaring for the NFL draft shortly after the conclusion of the regular season, there was one Wolverine who appeared to be holding out.

Mason Graham, Will Johnson, Colston Loveland, Josaiah Stewart, and Myles Hinton all shared their decisions to enter the NFL draft, but fellow star, defensive tackle Kenneth Grant, hadn’t made any kind of announcement sharing which way he was leaning. With one year of eligibility remaining, it was unlikely he would return, but with NIL now being a factor, there were some reports that Michigan football was giving him pause.

However, on the day that the maize and blue were wheels up to Tampa for the ReliaQuest Bowl, Grant announced that he is entering the NFL draft after all.

The Wolverines will be without him in the bowl game but will have Rayshaun Benny, Trey Pierce, Ike Iwunnah, and Enow Etta. All of the aforementioned are presumed to be returning next season, and Michigan has also added former Alabama defensive tackle Damon Payne — who has one year of eligibility remaining — via the transfer portal.

Do New Orleans Saints need more help on defensive interior or edge?

Do the New Orleans Saints need more help on the defensive interior or out on the edge? PFF debated what’s best for them in the 2025 draft:

The New Orleans Saints have a lot of needs to address in the 2025 NFL draft, and the defensive line might be chief among them if Spencer Rattler can make some plays at quarterback down the stretch.

Pro Football Focus analyst Bradley Locker completed an exercise where he pondered two popular draft selections for each team in the league. For the Saints, those two players were Texas A&M Aggies defensive end Nic Scourton and Michigan Wolverines defensive tackle Kenneth Grant.

“The Saints rank 20th in defensive EPA per play and have a boatload of free agents set to hit the open market along the defensive line. New Orleans will desperately need more from that unit next year, so it’s hard to go wrong with either of these options,” said Locker.

The decision basically depends on which ground needs more help for next season.

Scourton would be a much-needed boon to the pass rush. He had more success in the Big Ten than the SEC, but still had 17 sacks during his career. He projects as a solid player that should be better against the pass.

The Aggies product already boasts a solid pass rush set. Given that a defensive tackle leads New Orleans in sacks, they can certainly use a boost off the edge. Carl Granderson has regressed a little bit and Chase Young hasn’t been much of an improvement.

In a surprising turn of events, though, the Saints run defense has fallen off the edge too. Bryan Bresee has become a great pass rusher, but is a long way from solid against the run. Adding another stopper up the middle could be the perfect pair with him.

That’s exactly what Grant would be. Don’t ask him to get to the passer, but he doesn’t let much by him on the ground. He is a massive presence and recent All-American.

A drop in production from Scourton this year could scare New Orleans from potentially falling into the same trap of athletic defensive linemen. Grant is a lower-risk prospect and would immediately improve their line.

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49ers add massive, national champion, ‘freak’ defensive tackle in mock draft

The San Francisco 49ers list of needs in the 2025 draft is long, but it would make sense if they prioritized their defensive line.

Assessing exactly how the San Francisco 49ers will utilize their first-round pick in the 2025 draft is tough given some of the sweeping changes we may see to their roster in the offseason.

The trenches jump out as a priority no matter how the offseason goes given some of their struggles on both the offensive and defensive lines. A mock draft from the 33rd Team makes a safe assumption that the 49ers will look to retool a defensive front that was once the backbone of a great San Francisco defense.

At the No. 14 overall pick in that mock the 49ers walk out with Michigan defensive tackle Kenneth Grant.

Grant is a ludicrous athlete at 6-3, 339 pounds, and over his three seasons at Michigan he’s racked up 41 tackles, 12 tackles for loss, 6.5 sacks and 10 (!) pass breakups. The pass breakups are a Michigan record for defensive linemen per the Athletic’s Bruce Feldman.

Feldman included Grant at No. 3 on his annual ‘Freaks List’ thanks to Grant’s rare combination of size and athleticism.

Here’s what Feldman wrote about Grant in the Athletic:

As a sophomore, he helped anchor the nation’s No. 1 defense for the national champion Wolverines, making 29 tackles, 5.0 for loss, with 3.5 sacks; six quarterback hurries, five pass breakups, one interception and one fumble recovery. When Grant arrived in Ann Arbor as a three-star recruit from Indiana, Jim Harbaugh raved about the then-360-pounder running a sub-5.0 40. Anyone doubting Grant’s speed (a max of 18.75 mph on the GPS) only needed to see him run down Penn State running back Kaytron Allen in the open field last year. His ability to fly up Michigan’s reactive plyo stairs test, a series of seven 26-inch-high stairs that players attempt to jump up as fast as possible, is truly freakish.

San Francisco’s defense needs disruptive players up front, and Grant has all the tools to be a force on the interior of an NFL defensive line. If he falls to wherever the 49ers wind up picking in next year’s draft it wouldn’t be a surprise if they viewed Grant as a future centerpiece of a reconstructed defensive line.

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Cowboys return to Michigan DL well in latest 2025 first-round mock draft

There can’t be a curse on the Cowboys when it comes to selecting Michigan Wolverine defenders. Right?

Lightning can’t strike in the same place three times, can it? After being burned twice in the last 10 years when they’ve used their first-round pick on a Michigan product, the Dallas Cowboys wouldn’t go there again. Would they?

Well, that’s the case in the latest first-round 2025 Mock Draft conducted by our friends over at DraftWire. Projecting Dallas to end up with the No. 11 overall pick in the first round, they have the Cowboys going Wolverine all over again with the selection of intriguing DT Kenneth Grant in their latest mock.

The Cowboys are currently sitting at No. 13 following Week 13’s action.

Dallas of course did not get a quality return on investment from their 2018 selection of DE Taco Charlton nor their 2023 selection of DT Mazi Smith. Or, at least not yet on the latter of the two. Smith has improved over the last month or so, looking to move himself out of “potential bust” assessments. But neither should really be considered outside of “bad luck” talk when it comes to how the Cowboys should move in 2025.

Grant seems to project as a one-gap nose tackle. Standing at 6-foot-3 and weighing 339 pounds, he took over for Smith in the middle of the Wolverine’s defensive line. He has 5.5 sacks over the last two seasons. A to Z Sports compared him to DJ Reader of the Detroit Lions.

Related: 3-Round Cowboys 2025 Mock Draft: Trade back nets WR, trench help with extra pick

Kenneth Grant proving he’s more than Mason Graham’s sidekick at Michigan

Kenneth Grant proving he’s a viable first-round talent in the 2025 NFL Draft on his own and more than Mason Graham’s sidekick at Michigan

Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham has been a staple in the first half of the first round of 2025 NFL mock drafts since the college season started. And deservedly so; Graham is a menacing, technically proficient and disruptive headache for opposing offenses.

Graham isn’t the only premium prospect along that Wolverines defensive front, however. In Saturday’s upset win in Columbus, Kenneth Grant showed Ohio State and the scouting world that he is more than just a beneficiary of playing next to a star like Graham.

Grant was the best player on the field for either team in Michigan’s suffocating defensive performance in a game where it’s feasible that as many as 17 of the defensive starters between the two teams will be drafted into the NFL at some point. Ohio State couldn’t block Grant, period.

 

Grant finished the game with five QB pressures per PFF, which the stats service notes is the most QB pressures by any defensive interior player for the entire week. He’s been doing it all season, however.

 

The 339-pound Grant consistently uses his freakish (for his size) burst and long speed to disrupt screens and outside runs. When he doesn’t get home as a pass rusher, there might not be a better DT in the draft at getting his hands into the passing lane. Against USC, a game I attended, Grant got his hands on one Miller Moss attempt and forced a high throw on another that stopped a drive.

Grant is a viable first-round talent in his own right. That’s no shot at Graham, who belongs in the top-15 rankings. Both can be great individually, and they are. They were the bright spot for Michigan in an overall disappointing campaign for the defending national champs and the biggest reason why that 7-5 season ended with the most important win the Wolverines could dream about.

Michigan football front focused on stopping the run vs. Ohio State

It’s gonna be a little more challenging this year. #GoBlue

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Almost always in The Game, the team that runs for more yards wins. That’s been the case going back to 2001, with the 2000 game being the last time that the victor between Michigan and Ohio State was decided by the team that had not won the rushing battle.

The Wolverines pride themselves on running the ball but the Buckeyes have been more consistent with it in 2024. However, the two teams are neck and neck defensively when it comes to stopping the run, with OSU coming in ranked No. 3 in rushing yards allowed per game while Michigan is No. 4. So for the maize and blue defense, though Ryan Day has tended to want to pass the ball downfield, the name of The Game on Saturday is to stop the run.

“That’s been our motto the whole year, especially as a defense,” senior edge rusher Josaiah Stewart said. “We like to keep teams one-dimensional. Once we stop their run, they can’t get into a flow as an offense and give their players the ball in space — play-action, boots, and things like that. But once we stop that run, we know what to expect.”

“That’s how you get to the passing downs,” junior defensive tackle Kenneth Grant said. “We always say stop the run first so we could rush the passer on passing downs. So, whatever we do is always stop to run first.”

Ohio State will have some limitations up front, but it hasn’t let it be a crutch. Two starting offensive linemen are out for the season and injuries have consistently piled up. And, according to PFF, Michigan boasts the best run defense (No. 3) as well as pass rush (No. 1) that the Buckeyes will have seen all season.

Still, Grant knows that they’ll bring their best on Saturday, Michigan just has to be ready.

“Oh, they’re a good unit, work together,” Grant said. “There’s no drop off for me, it’s Ohio State. So they’re always going to come (hard). So, I mean, just got to take it to their face.”

As far as the backs are concerned, Ole Miss transfer Quinshon Judkins (who leads OSU with 759 yards on 135 carries) is the more consistent back, while stalwart TreVeyon Henderson — who has struggled against Michigan in his career — is the big-play threat with 730 yards on 98 carries.

Stewart broke down what he’s seen from each on film and what challenges they present.

“No. 1 (Judkins) — a lot more elusive, I feel like,” Stewart said. “We played against 32 (Henderson) last year. Same back, powerful, more inside the tackles. He’s not afraid to block. But No. 1, a lot more in space, make moves.”

OSU’s season low as 64 yards on 31 carries against Nebraska earlier in the year, while its run defense held Western Michigan to 28 yards. Michigan was held to just 69 yards against Indiana but the defense held Fresno State in Week 1 to nine yards rushing and held Northwestern to just 10 yards this past week.

Michigan and Ohio State will kick off in Columbus at noon EST with the game nationally broadcast on Fox.

Michigan football has the best pass rush in the country per PFF

#Michigan is still formidable up front. #GoBlue

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Despite all of the struggles in the 2024 season, according to PFF, Michigan football has the best pass rush in the entire country, out of all 134 college football teams.

The Wolverines have a pass rush grade of 90.8, nearly two points ahead of South Carolina, more than five points better than Ohio State, and just leagues beyond most teams.

Of course, that comes courtesy of a front with at least two first-round NFL draft picks, if not more.

The headliners are obviously defensive tackles Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant, as well as rotational tackle Rayshaun Benny. But edge rushers Josaiah Stewart and Derrick Moore have both come into their own, as well — as has reserve TJ Guy.

As Grant sees it, the games are getting tougher as offensive lines key in on him and Graham, but that’s opening up opportunities for the guys on the edge.

“Yeah, a lot more seven-man, eight-man, nine-man protection,” Grant said. “So I mean, just trying to contain our all of our fronts, all of our edges and our D-tackles. I mean just trying to adjust (to it).”

Moore has been banged up, but is getting healthier and played at Illinois after missing the game at Washington. As he continues to improve year over year, he can’t help but praise the help that he and Stewart get by playing alongside the formidable tackles in the defensive interior.

“Of course, having them two guys in the middle it’s a blessing,” Moore said. “You can always get the one-on-one on the edge. For me and (Josaiah Stewart) it kind of takes the pressure off us. But like I said, man, those two guys right there inside are dogs, so having them two inside of you, it’s an honor.”

It will be incumbent upon the line to get pressure once again, as Michigan hosts rival MSU, with a quarterback in Aidan Chiles who can extend plays with his legs, but is also mistake-prone. The game will kick off at 7:30 p.m. EDT at The Big House on Saturday night.

Saints improve the NFL’s worst defense in this 2025 mock draft

The Saints improved the NFL’s worst defense in this 2025 mock draft. Michigan’s big defensive tackle Kenneth Grant may be just who they need next to Bryan Bresee:

No NFL team has given up more yards this season than the New Orleans Saints (2,375), and while much of that has been due to a surprisingly porous pass defense (1,573 yards allowed, third-most), plenty of blame should go to a run defense that’s been a weakness throughout the Dennis Allen era. The Saints are allowing 5.2 yards per carry, second-worst around the league.

So how do they fix it? This 2025 mock draft has a suggestion. Draft Wire’s Curt Popejoy has the Saints picking Michigan’s big defensive tackle Kenneth Grant at No. 9 overall. He may be just who they need next to Bryan Bresee.

Grant arrived on campus at an imposing 350 pounds and slimmed down to a more-manageable 339, and he’s one of the best all-around athletes in college football. Michigan has sent plenty of defensive linemen to the NFL but the 20-year-old has broken many of their weight room records while impressing the Wolverines’ strength and conditioning staff.

Whether or not it’s Allen conducting the Saints defense again in 2025, the interior line will need more attention. It’s mostly been a one-man show from Bresee outside of occasional stops by Nathan Shepherd, and Khalen Saunders’ impressive interception return (which really isn’t something we should expect from a nose tackle). Rookie draft pick Khristian Boyd has been benched in favor of John Ridgeway III, who the Saints traded for just before the season started.

Someone like Grant could absolutely be in play for next year’s draft. Beyond stopping the run, it’s impressive that he can get after the quarterback (5.5 career sacks) and disrupt passing lanes (9 balls batted down at the line of scrimmage) from a spot that those kind of numbers are hard to come by. But this team has a lot of problems to solve, and it’s too soon to say whether this is the direction they’ll move first.

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2025 NFL Draft Summer scouting report: Kenneth Grant, Defensive Line, Michigan

The 2025 NFL Draft isn’t for months, but many teams and fans have already focused on the next draft cycle, which means we are, too.

Summer is the most pivotal part of scouting for both teams and fans. The idea is to educate yourself on the players who could be selected in next April’s draft and who could play for or against the Vikings. 

The latter part is critical to our Summer scouting here on Vikings Wire.

The Minnesota Vikings and General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah only have three picks in the 2025 NFL Draft heading into the Summer. More could be acquired through trade or the compensatory variety, but for now, that is all the ammo they have. 

The lack of draft picks means this series will focus on the players we are likely to play against or who could cause problems for the team in the future. Every position will be covered so that you, the reader, can be a complete NFL fan as much as you are a Vikings fan. Educating yourself on these prospects is critical to better understanding the offseason as a whole, and we feel we can fill in the gaps.

Kenneth Grant

  • Position: Defensive Line
  • School: Michigan
  • Height: 6-3
  • Weight: 339 pounds
  • Year: Third-year Junior
  • 3-star recruit according to 247 Sports
  • Played track and field in high school
  • A two-way player in high school (played guard)
  • Second-team All-Big Ten in 2023
  • 29 games
  • 37 total tackles
  • Five tackles for loss
  • Three and a half sacks
  • Five pass deflections
  • 80.4 overall grade
  • 73 run-defense grade
  • 78.4 pass-rush grade
  • 17 hurries
  • 19 defensive stops

Strength

Regardless of position, Kenneth Grant is one of the strongest players in college football. He uses it to gain leverage on a player at a moments notice and win reps or disrupt plays. A prime example is that he can push a player back while keeping his head on a swivel to ensure he doesn’t misread any play. This department has very impressive stuff from Kenneth Grant.

Motor

What is all that horsepower worth if you don’t have great miles per gallon behind it? The motor that powers his strength and energy in each and every play shines through most on film. Even when he is seemingly taken out of plays, his motor allows him to recover on plays when he is taken out momentarily.

Play Recognition

Another trait that shines through is his ability to recognize plays repeatedly, whether it be finding the running lanes and clogging them or dismissing blockers from a play to get in the backfield and disrupt. This speaks to his ability to work on his game and study film, which tells us that his work ethic is strong enough to support further growth of his game.

Kenneth Grant is a breath of fresh air in a defensive line group that is full of high-end prospects. He is one of the few players who still has plenty of room to grow into a variety of different player types. In 2024 he has a chance to continue to thrive off of being alongside Mason Graham, just as he benefits from playing alongside Grant. Together, they can be a dominant duo, but for Grant specifically, seeing him be more than a disrupter would be nice. Seeing some simple box score production would be nice, especially in the backfield, with a disrupting factor with tackles for loss or sacks. Either way, it won’t make or break his stock but instead just determine how mainstream he goes, he is a great player either way it just is whether he makes it into the first round or not.