The Giants thought Patrick Graham would be staying on as defensive coordinator, but he had other plans in mind.
Graham accepted a job Friday night as the Raiders’ defensive coordinator, after interviewing earlier in the day with Las Vegas’ new head coach, Josh McDaniels. A number of potentially awkward factors drove Graham’s decision not to return to the position he held for the past two years, a league source told The Post.
The Giants fired head coach Joe Judge — Graham’s close friend who brought him along as assistant head coach in 2020 — but tried to maintain many of Judge’s assistant coaches, sending a mixed message. Graham interviewed to replace Judge before the job went to Brian Daboll, who would’ve been Graham’s new boss. And former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores is suing the Giants and the NFL, alleging racism over what he claims was a “sham” head-coach interview by the Giants.
Now that the Giants have a hole in the most important staff position for the offense-minded Daboll, who will run the defense?
Former Ravens coordinator Wink Martindale is expected to get a look, but it’s a good year to need a defensive coordinator, with former head coaches Vic Fangio and Mike Zimmer on the market. Zimmer is a disciple of, and was a former defensive coordinator under, Bill Parcells, who maintains a good relationship with new Giants general manager Joe Schoen.
All is fair in love and the NFL, including one head coach stealing another’s defensive coordinator despite more than 20 years of friendship. Daboll and McDaniels first worked together at Michigan State in the late 1990s and Daboll helped bring McDaniels to Bill Belichick’s Patriots, where they both later worked with Graham (as well as Judge and Flores). Now Daboll and McDaniels are competing for some of the same assistants off Belichick’s coaching tree.
Teams typically can deny interview requests with an assistant coach who is under contract if the job opening is a lateral move, as it was for Graham. However, because the Giants granted Graham permission to interview as Steelers defensive coordinator earlier this offseason — before Daboll was hired and expressed his interest in retaining Graham — they could not deny requests from any other teams, according to a different source.
Graham could’ve turned down the Raiders on his own, but a lot has changed since last offseason, when he said no thanks to interviewing for the Jets’ head-coach opening. He chose then to accept a raise and a contract extension, staying loyal to the Giants and Judge.
The situation now is different. Actually, it’s different than it was five days ago, when Daboll, Schoen and co-owner John Mara sang Graham’s praises and said he would return unless he became head coach of the Vikings. Indications are that premature determination didn’t sit well with Graham, who interviewed twice with the Vikings, but did not get the job.
Graham spent the 2019 season as Dolphins defensive coordinator under Flores — “We’re like brothers,” Graham said in December — but was given permission to make a lateral move to the Giants. Flores’ lawsuit claims that the Giants contacted him on the same day Judge was fired and even suggested that Daboll might be available to him as offensive coordinator.
The Giants do not get any draft-pick compensation for Graham making a lateral move, as they would have if he had become a head coach.