Patrick Graham’s four years as Las Vegas Raiders defensive coordinator ended quietly. His league-low blitz rate and a painful Jaguars rejection tell the fuller story.
Let’s be real, Patrick Graham and his four-year run as Las Vegas’ defensive coordinator didn’t end with a firing. It ended quietly, and that quiet says almost as much about the organization as it does about Graham himself.
He outlasted two head coaches, Josh McDaniels and Antonio Pierce, only to finish his tenure under Pete Carroll in a shrunken role, reportedly calling his own scheme for just six halves all season, according to Sports Illustrated’s Hondo Carpenter.
That sting followed a deeper one. ESPN’s reporting on the league’s coach-hiring process described Graham sitting alone at a Jacksonville steakhouse in January 2025, waiting on a dinner that never happened. Jaguars owner Shahid Khan and his executives skipped it to finalize a deal with Liam Coen instead. Graham said the pain wasn’t about losing the job. It was about how he lost it. He later broke down crying on his garage floor, wondering if he simply hadn’t done enough.
Patrick Graham really got a raw deal…
Put those two things together, a diminished role in Las Vegas and a gutting snub in Jacksonville, and you get a fuller picture of why Graham’s exit feels bigger than a typical coordinator change. He still landed on his feet. Pittsburgh hired him Jan. 30, proof that plenty of teams still valued what he brought to a defense.
Here’s the part fans should actually argue about, though. Over four seasons, Graham blitzed less than almost any defensive coordinator in the league. That conservative streak never fixed a Raiders secondary that got picked apart again and again. Maybe it wasn’t the personnel holding this defense back. Maybe it was the predictability. If Pittsburgh inherited that same passive approach, it’s fair to wonder if Graham’s next stop runs into the same wall.
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Meanwhile, the Raiders have handed the defense to Rob Leonard under new head coach Klint Kubiak, and people close to the building are already buzzing about how detailed and demanding his practices are. One longtime staffer reportedly said he’s never seen a coach walk onto the field that prepared, not even under Carroll or Jon Gruden.
Whether that intensity shows up on defense in the form of actual aggression, the kind Patrick Graham rarely brought, will say a lot about whether this new regime is different or just newly organized.
Graham’s personal story earns sympathy. His scheme’s track record earns scrutiny. Both things can be true at once, and how the Steelers manage that tension may end up mattering more than anything that happened in Las Vegas.
*Top Photo: Ramble Illustration/Getty Images