Usually, when there's a coaching change, the new head coach hires a full staff of his own assistant coaches. But Pete Carroll, given his roots as a defensive coach, surprisingly ended up keeping Patrick Graham as his defensive coordinator when he was hired as Las Vegas Raiders' head coach.
While Graham's unit has not been great this season, they've certainly had their moments. This is in spite of a general lack of high-end talent and a lackluster offense doing them no favors. It's also fair to assume, regardless of what happens with Carroll, that Graham will be gone after the season.
Recently, it has been noted how the Raiders have shifted to a Cover 3 defensive scheme like the Seattle Seahawks had during Carroll's time there. That is a marked shift from Graham's history as a defensive coordinator, not to mention it looks like a bad fit for the talent in the secondary.
Patrick Graham says it all about Pete Carroll's Raiders by saying nothing
Simply put, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the Raiders are running Carroll's defense, and Graham's philosophies have become inconsequential. On recent episode of the Vegas Nation First and 10 Podcast, Vincent Bonsignore put a finer point on that lack of aligment.
"There [were] people reaching out to me yesterday that know football, that watch football and have been watching this team. It’s clear that there is a lack of an alignment between what Pete Carroll wants to do defensively, what Patrick Graham wants to do defensively,” Bonsignore said. "It’s been happening all year. I was told at the very beginning of the year, before when Pat was retained, 'Keep an eye on that because they do things completely different. Their systems are completely different.'”
Carroll has already been dragged for adding his two sons to the coaching staff, but Bonsignore's report begs the question of why he kept Graham in town. If their philosophies don't mesh, something was bound to give, and Carroll knew it wasn't going to be him.
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Graham had his weekly session with the media on Thursday. With Carroll being the third head coach he has worked for in Las Vegas, Graham was asked if there's anything about where the team is right now that makes him more optimistic about the future than he might have been previously.
"I don't wanna judge it against the previous regimes," Graham said. "Just dealing with today, really, to be honest with you. The opportunity ahead of us with Houston. The season hasn’t gone the way we wanted, but we got a great matchup. I’m excited about that.”
Obviously, Graham didn't throw shade at Carroll's Raiders. But this was the perfect softball question and opportunity to give him a vote of confidence. After continuing to say he's excited about the opportunity to play against the Texans, Graham circled back to the premise of Walters' question.
"To compare regimes, I can't...I'm not there," Graham said. "It's about today... It's about today. It's about today for me."
Comparing working for Carroll to working under Antonio Pierce or Josh McDaniels in any specific way would've been ill-advised. But if Graham wanted to offer some kind of endorsement for Carroll, regardless of his own tenuous job status when the season is over, he could have. But he didn't.
Instead, in the span of about a minute, Graham summed up what it's been like working under Carroll and being a defensive coordinator by title only by saying nothing positive about him at all. And fans don't blame him one bit.