Those who know him say Graham will fit right in with Eagles

LLOYD CARR KNOWS a lot of people projected Brandon Graham as a 3-4 NFL linebacker, not as a defensive end. But Carr, the now-retired coach who brought Graham to Michigan, doesn't think that's going to be a problem for the Eagles.

"He reminds me a lot of LaMarr Woodley," Carr said yesterday, likening Graham to his former Wolverines teammate, now a 3-4 linebacker for the Steelers. Woodley made the Pro Bowl last season. "Brandon has that kind of movement, and athletic ability. He could fit into a 3-4, but he could also excel in a 4-3. Watching the Eagles over the years, I see a team that likes to blitz a lot, and Brandon could be a real difference-maker there, against one-on-one blocking. He has a great center of gravity, tremendous quickness. He's so athletic. I don't care who he's rushing on, he'll be a handful."

Graham, drafted 13th overall Thursday night by the Eagles after they traded up from the 24th slot, flew in from Michigan for a news conference yesterday. Before shaking every hand he could find in the NovaCare auditorium - and soliciting everyone's name - Graham vowed that "I like to hit people."

Hard to dislike a guy like that.

"Brandon's a kid who's going to give his all every day. He's going to come to work," Rod Oden, Graham's coach at Detroit's Crockett High, said yesterday. Oden was answering a question about why Eagles fans should like this pick. "He prepares so well, practices, meetings. They're going to love that 'blue collar' about him. He's going to be there, in the community and on the field."

In fact, Graham later confirmed a story Oden told about how, if the coach was busy elsewhere at the start of practice, he knew Graham would get everybody lined up and working.

"He always believed you don't have to have a coach on the field to have practice," said Oden, who awaited the pick with Graham's family in a hotel suite Thursday. "On and off the field, guys wanted to follow Brandon."

Just after the Eagles made the trade and the pick, head coach Andy Reid talked about how Graham's frame and playing style reminded him of Hugh Douglas, the Eagles' now-retired three-time Pro Bowl defensive end. As it happens, Douglas, now in the media business, was in attendance yesterday for comparison.

"I was exactly his size," Douglas recalled. Douglas recalled that he, too, was listed as LB/DE before the Jets made him the 16th pick in the 1995 draft, from Ohio's Central State. "They didn't know where I was going to play."

Douglas said he has seen tape of Graham and expects him to be effective.

"He's for real," Douglas said.

Carr, now an associate athletic director at Michigan, said Graham "has always been highly motivated," but Graham said he actually quit football once, right after he started playing at age 7, "because I got hit real hard." Graham said his father, Darrick Walton, told him quitting was not the way to go.

"I was big for my age, and I went against the biggest dude on the team," Graham said. "I got knocked out. I was running the ball . . . he was 10 and I was 7. He ran right through me and I had a stinger. I got up, I walked off and then I told the coach that I don't know if I'm ready for this game. My daddy was mad at me. I ended up talking to him. We cried - well, I cried, and he brought me back out the following year, and I told him that, 'I'm not going to quit. I'm going to stick it out.' "

Graham obviously is glad his father took that stance.

"I wouldn't be playing this game of football if it wasn't for my dad bringing me back out there," he said. "My mom [Tasha Graham] was the type - 'I don't want my son hurt. I don't want him out there. He can do something else, like chess or something like that. Nothing physical.' My dad didn't want me to quit. He just wanted me to try 1 more year, and I loved it after that year, and I continued to do it."

If there was another crisis point in Graham's career, it came when he showed up at Michigan weighing, he said, 290-to-300 pounds, the result of a spring spent eating "chili dogs, chili cheese, chili everything." The Wolverines had recruited him as a linebacker. Carr - who didn't recall the weight gain being quite that drastic - told Graham he would have to redshirt and drop some pounds if he planned to stay at linebacker.

"He said, 'Coach, I just want to play.' To me, that kind of exemplified the kind of attitude he has," Carr said. So Graham went back to defensive end, where he had started out in high school.

"You'll like him," Carr promised. "He's a humble, hardworking guy who's going to try to do the things he's coached to do. He's not going to be intimidated by moving up to the next level."

Graham said it took until his sophomore year for him to get down to his current listed 268, which gave him the quickness to be a dominant college player, in the style, he hopes, of his hero, Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.

"I always just wanted to be that one that's always going to be around the ball. Always the big-hit guy," Graham said. "Somebody you can always expect that he's going to bring the 'boom' to somebody, and stuff like that. I try to be that leader out there and let everybody know that I'm fighting for you, and I want you to fight for me." *