Patrick Graham’s exit from Las Vegas came with enough turbulence on its own. The former Raiders defensive coordinator is no longer in the building after the 2021 season, and his run under Pete Carroll never really gave him the kind of control a coordinator wants. According to Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter, Graham ran his own defense for just six halves of the 2026 season.
But the sting that clearly hit harder came after the season, during a head-coaching interview with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
An ESPN report this week said Graham was devastated after the Jaguars left him waiting at a Jacksonville steakhouse in January, where he had shown up to meet with owner Shahid Khan and team executives. He sat alone at a table set for five, waited about 30 minutes, and even took a selfie with the empty chairs as the minutes passed and his chances faded.
The reason the Jaguars never arrived, according to ESPN, was that they were meeting at the same time about a contract with future head coach Liam Coen, who had reentered the process after withdrawing the day before. Graham’s awkward day apparently started before dinner, too, when he ran into Coen while leaving the team facility - the first hint, ESPN reported, that Coen may have already had the job locked up while Graham was still interviewing.
Graham said the pain wasn’t about missing out on the job itself.
The pain he felt that night as he waited at the table and for weeks after wasn’t because he didn’t get the job - ‘that’s life,’ he said - it was because of the way he didn’t get the job. ‘I was hurt through the process,’ Graham said.
Once he got home, Graham said he broke down in his garage.
‘It just made me think, like, ‘****, I haven’t done enough,’ Graham, now the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive coordinator, told ESPN. ‘Football is pretty high on my priority list. And it felt like the thing that I hold in the highest regard let me down and crushed me.’”
Graham’s move to Pittsburgh came quickly after that. He was hired by the Steelers on January 30, and after his head-coaching interviews, he had become one of the top defensive coordinator candidates in this year’s hiring cycle.
The Jaguars’ handling of the interview process is going to draw plenty of criticism, but Graham’s final stretch with the Raiders wasn’t exactly smooth either. He wasn’t the Raiders’ first choice to be Carroll’s defensive coordinator in 2025, and there had been questions about whether his return had as much to do with Maxx Crosby and keeping a familiar face around as it did with Graham’s fit.
Now the Raiders are moving forward with Rob Leonard as defensive coordinator, and the focus shifts to how he meshes with first-year head coach Klint Kubiak. The expectation, at least from the outside, is that Kubiak plans to shake up plenty around the organization.
Raider Nation Radio host ‘JT the Brick’ said this week on his show that people around the team are already impressed with Kubiak’s approach.
“I talked to people behind the scenes, off the record, who have been with this organization and [they] said he’s the best they’ve ever seen in pre-ready practice,” Raider Nation Radio host ‘JT the Brick’ said this week on his flagship radio show.
“I said elaborate. Someone who has been with the organization as long as me, over 25 years said, quote, ‘I’ve never seen a coach come out on the field ready to practice and there was some good ones.’
I mean, Pete Carroll and Jon Gruden alone and Josh McDaniels was a genius in regard to preparation. It didn’t work, but the guy was prepped up for practice.
So someone who I hold in high authority told me that Kubiak’s practices are going to be so bleeping detailed that the players who have played for other coaches are going to have to get into this quickly and that’s why the mini camps OTAs were really important.”
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