Executive Vice President, Football Operations & General Manager, Andrew Berry (4.24.25)

Opening Statement:

“Real excited to use the fifth overall pick on Mason Graham. He is a DNA match for our defense. Disruptive, interior penetrator. I think he can really affect the pocket from inside, high motor player, really physical, really tough. We thought he was one of the more dominant trench prospects in this year’s class. You know, to address obviously the trade. We just felt like it was a fantastic opportunity for our organization to move down three spots, still get a top-notch prospect in the trenches. Adding a pick, in what we view as really the sweet spot for this year’s draft class, and then adding a first-round pick next year in a class that quite frankly we think will be a bit stronger in the first 30 picks. So, we just felt like over – both in the short term and over a multiyear time horizon, it was a fit for what we wanted to do with the team and what we wanted to do with the roster. And we’re excited to add Mason. We’re excited to add the extra draft resources both this year and next and with that, I’ll open it up for questions.”

 

Did you go into tonight targeting Mason Graham? 

“I wouldn’t say that we necessarily targeted an individual player, Tony (Grossi). There are a number of players that we liked at the top of the draft, and we spent a lot of time with each of them. Mason would be among that group. We think he’s one of the premier linemen in this draft on either side of the ball and we were excited to have the opportunity to select him.”

 

Andrew, when you talked to Jacksonville or anyone else, how mandatory was it getting next year’s first-round pick? 

“So, I think for any trade, it depends on how far back you’re going, realistically. You know, for this one, that like that was a huge part. It was – it would have been a non-starter for anyone without getting a future one to move back because these picks, these resources are so valuable.”

 

Andrew, when you look at the way this played out to end up with not only five, but 33 and 36 so close together this year and then those first rounders next year back-to-back. Can this be transformational for your football team over these two seasons? 

“Yeah, I think we certainly hope that’s the case, Mary Kay (Cabot), but we also have to make good on the players that we do select. And that’s not just the selection or the acquisition process, but that’s the development process as well. But we’re excited about it because, we look at it as we sit here today, we’ll have, you know, five picks in the top 100, three of those in the top 36 and then really over a two-year time span, we’ll have five top 36 picks and probably six top 50 picks. So that’s quite an opportunity for us to add young players to the roster or to use those resources, whether it’s for veteran player or generate other resources over the next 24 months.”

 

Andrew, what made you take Graham over someone like Ashton Jeanty when you need an impact player on offense?

“Yeah. So, Jeff (Schudel), we’ve always long believed that we want to be elite in the trenches. The big guys, they go early and they’re hard to acquire and they’re hard to find. There are a lot of great players that we liked at the top of the draft. And you know, I kind of joked with our internal crew, especially as we got to meet the prospects and their families, that I wish I had multiple top five picks because they’re not only good players, but they’re great people and Ashton (Jeanty) would certainly be among them.”

 

Andrew, I mean, you really discussed a lot about Travis (Hunter) last week, I mean, Unicorn (Shohei) Ohtani, all that stuff. Is there any concern that like you just traded a chance to get a great player that is very unique even though you do get these other picks?

“You know, Terry (Pluto), I think that we obviously had strong affinity for Travis, no different than we had strong affinity for a number of players at the top. I think the thing for us are there are a lot of good players in every class. And you know, as much as we liked Travis or Abdul (Carter) or, you know, Ashton, like whoever that may be, the opportunity is still to get a premier prospect and add significantly to our resources, which gives us added flexibility to build the team. We felt like it was an opportunity.”

 

Do you also view this as a chance? You’re still recouping picks from the last few years that you gave away? 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t really tie it to that. This is really more of an independent decision to move back three spots and to get, you know, pick number 36 in this draft and a future one while also getting a top player in the trenches. We thought that was just an excellent outcome for us in terms of using the resource of the number two pick.”

 

I guess Andrew kind of going off of Terry’s question, but you talk about the chance to add more, like, high talented prospects. Like, what do you say then to people that are like, oh, well, they passed up on, you know, such guys who could be transformational this year to bet on next year? 

“Yeah, Ashley (Bastock), I think that there’s probably more than one or two top prospects in the draft. And by nature, even if you select someone at two, you’re going to pass on a good player – like, by definition, you’re going to pass on a good player. There’s more than one good player in every draft, and for us to be able to add multiple premier prospects over a longer time horizon, we think that will allow us to build a stronger team.”

 

Kevin (Stefanski) recently told me that he saw value in a lot of guys in the later rounds of the draft, too. Where do you now sit with that, and who’s left for you guys, especially on the offensive side of the ball, that you guys might take this year? 

“So, I think we really view the sweet spot of this draft, realistically, is in day two. We think there’s a strong pool of players and it flats out maybe a little bit more quickly than in some previous drafts. But look, I think there are going to be good players up and down the board. And, you know, as we sit here today, we have four picks on Friday, and we’ll be excited about that, and, you know, we’ll see how the first round unfolds and what’s available to us as we head into tomorrow.”

 

Andrew, do you and Jim Schwartz believe that Mason Graham is a better complement to Myles Garrett than Abdul Carter?

“I wouldn’t necessarily – I mean, look, we’d love to have both of them, Tony (Grossi), just to be candid. The reason we like Mason is because he has the ability to be an excellent pass rusher from the interior, and that’s really hard to find. It’s a premium skill set now in the NFL. Those guys, they make a lot of money, and they very rarely become available. You know, in terms of Abdul, whether the pass rush comes from the edge or the interior, preferably both, it doesn’t matter to us, but we’ll always take pass rushers.”

 

Hey, Andrew, when you talk about the DNA fit, can you go a little bit more into that? What specific position will he play? And also, just how do you see him fitting when Mike Hall was also your first pick last year, and it seems like he got a lot at one spot. 

“So to answer your first question, Nate (Ulrich), you know, when we say DNA fit, we want players, what we call attack players. So, guys who can use movement, quickness, power to really reestablish the line of scrimmage, get up field and ultimately rush the passer. The D-line, they’re the engine of our defense and their job is really just to mess things up at the line of scrimmage. It’s to attack and disrupt. And that’s a perfect fit for both Mason’s, you know, physical skill set as well as his competitive personality. In terms of, like, positionally, like, we don’t – in an ideal world, we’re not really distinguishing our defensive tackles in our system. Like, sometimes we’ll play left and right. I know some teams will say, ‘hey, nose tackle or three tech.’ We really just want very similar defensive tackles. We feel like the best way to get mismatches in the NFL is to have interior pass rushing defensive linemen because they’re just a lot harder to protect against slide two than your edge guys. And so, like, part of the reason we’re so excited is, you know, to have Mike and Mason, two guys that we think will legitimately affect the quarterback. And if they get singled up because Myles is commanding those lives, they can really make offenses pay. And then the last thing I’d say is, we really want to be six to eight deep across the defensive line because we play our guys like – they’re like hockey lines, right. So we really shuffle them in and out because we demand so much of them running to the ball, getting off the ball that you can’t play with that intensity for 90% of the snaps per the game.”

 

Andrew, with this quarterback class not necessarily being the strongest one in recent memory, and next year is supposed to be stronger. Now that you’ve got two first round picks, are you guys poised to potentially be in a really good position to get that spot next year? 

“Yeah, I think that’s a possibility, Mary Kay. But I also say that we’re pretty early in the weekend, so I don’t know how the rest of the draft is going to unfold. There’s talent across positions, including the quarterback position, and we just really have to see kind of how our next. I’m trying to remember how many picks we have, Peter (John-Baptiste). But next seven or eight picks, whatever it is, unfold throughout the weekend.”

 

Andrew, along those lines, you said you guys watched quarterback classes two years at a time. How much of this trade has something to do with what you saw in that class?

“I’d say it’s maybe tangentially related, but even with that, quite frankly, you know, unless we were going to take a quarterback there, it’s a trade we probably would have done regardless.”

 

Andrew, would you say the goal going into today was to trade out a number two? 

“First of all, I don’t know that was the goal, as I put it more broadly as using number two to make the maximum impact on the team.”

 

And can you say if Hunter would have been the pick at number two? 

“That’s going to have to go to my grave.”

 

How long was this trade in the works?

“Yeah, so I’d say this, James (Gladstone) and I, we discussed this for probably the better part of two weeks. Obviously we didn’t formalize it, finalize it until were on the clock tonight. Actually, you know, it’s obviously the first deal I’ve done with James, but I respect him a lot because he was great to work with, and not often do you work on a big deal and it doesn’t, like, necessarily leak immediately. So, like, knowing that he’s actually a pretty good trade partner, he deserves a ton of credit for being a partner and bringing this to fruition.”

 

Andrew, obviously, a lot still has to play out tonight, but given some of the capital you added, do you feel there’s, you know, there’s still some advantageous opportunities to potentially move back into the first round before the night’s over? 

“Would never say never.”

 

Graham played, like, five different sports, lots of sports in high school. But how much a player like that, I mean, when you’re looking into the background and digging into these guys that, you know, versatility in terms of sports they play, how much does that play into the evaluation?

“Yeah, that’s a great question, Chris. It’s something that we actually track. Like, we actually have a specific area in our scouting reports where we ask our area guys to document that. And candidly, a lot of these players, whether you’re skilled, player alignment or like, even specialists, a lot of them were top athletes across sports, in high school, growing up, I think the most impressive thing with Mason that we really liked was just his wrestling background. And you can see that in his play, in terms of how he uses leverage, in terms of how he uses his hands, his grip strength and we do feel like that there’s always a pretty good track record of these guys who are high end wrestlers, the big guys who are high end wrestlers, and how that translates. But I would say just like his overall athleticism is something that we found attractive at the position.”

 

Andrew, Graham played his first couple years with (Jesse) Minter and then (Don “Wink”) Martindale this past year. Just how was his adjustment to that scheme? And also an advantage because Martindale has NFL experience in a scheme.

“So I’d say it’s probably a little bit more of an advantage going from Minter to Martindale because while they’re not the same defenses, the requirements of the defensive line in terms of being more of a read and react front are pretty similar. The characteristics are pretty similar. It’ll be a little bit more of an adjustment here because we’re not a read and react front, we’re an attack front. So the good thing is it’s simpler mentally, but it usually takes guys maybe a little bit of time to like, call it, like break old habits in that regard. But, he’s been coached by NFL guys certainly, so he’ll know the standard techniques may be a little bit different.”

 

There was a report that you had an offer to move down from five. Is that true or false?

“That is not true. Not true.”

 

Just with Graham’s time at Michigan, it was obviously really good two years ago when they won a title, but it seems like people say he was even better in 2024. Like, I mean, do you see that number one? And just what about those two years as a package? Like, what improvement did you see from him that made him really appealing?

“Yeah, I’ll be honest. Like he was to your point, actually, he was pretty good both years. And the improvement is, I guess he was just more dominant, more disruptive. This is a guy who he affects the run, he affects the pass, he produces in a variety of ways. I really can’t say enough good things about him. So, we’re excited to get him in our scheme, in our front. That really does highlight the defensive tackle position in terms of what we ask of them and we’re looking forward to that.”

 

I know you mentioned that you and James Gladstone have been discussing this deal for the last couple of weeks. Can you take us through today on how it evolved, if the offer changed? Was there a moment of decision for you at any point today?

“It’s a great question. Honestly, I prefer to keep those details private. That’s just kind of how I operate with trade discussions with other teams.”

 

Through the draft process, when did you shift to the point where you started to realize a trade was possible or you were going to entertain it? And how many teams did you end up talking to about it?

“Yeah, Jeremy (Fowler), we’re always pretty open minded to it. I think oftentimes when people think of a pick, it naturally automatically goes to like, okay, well how do you maximize it by selecting? But it’s a resource and there are so many different avenues that you can use the resource to improve your team. Whether it’s what we did tonight, you know, whether it’s, I’ll use the example, whether it’s we’re picking Travis Hunter, whether it’s you’re selecting a quarterback, whether it’s you use it to trade for a high-end veteran. And so, we really went into the spring pretty open minded because, you know, part of our DNA is we want to be opportunistic and flexible. We don’t want to necessarily close off our mind to how we can best utilize a resource to, you know, to improve the team. So it was, I guess, we probably went, our process probably went a little bit in parallel as we thought through, as we gained more information about the players and we thought through how we would actually use the pick. And ultimately it came down to like, okay, well, what will we potentially get offered? Who’s going to be on the board? What’s our assessment of those prospects? And then given those prospects, how big of an impact can they have on the team in the long term relative to what we could have in a trade package?”

 

Andrew, I know you just made the pick, but have you heard from Myles Garrett at all? Did he have any idea this would happen? And then what was Jim Schwartz’s reaction to selecting Mason Graham?

“I have not heard from Myles, but after I get up here, I’ll send him Mason’s contact information. I’m sure he’ll be pretty happy. You know, Jim, I’m sure our camera’s gotten everything. He was excited. He likes Mason a lot. Jaq (Cesaire) might have even been more excited. So, we’re looking forward to getting him down here.”

 

Andrew, what would your message be to Browns fans after, you know, trading the pick? It seemed like there was a generational talent there in Travis Hunter. What would your message be to them after making the trade and overall ended up taking Mason Graham?

“Yeah, I don’t know. The message would be too much different than what I talked about in my opening comments. Look, we’re always going to make the decisions that we think can maximize the team or give us the opportunity to maximize the team. And you know, we’re really excited for what we view as an elite trench prospect in Mason Graham and in addition to that to get another top 40 pick this year and a future one. You know, we think that’s something that’s really going to help improve our franchise.”

 

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