The Las Vegas Raiders were forced into another coaching change this offseason and turned to veteran head coach Pete Carroll as the man to lead the ship moving forward. With Carroll in the AFC West, he reignites an old rivalry with LA Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, which is bound to make this division rivalry even more tense.
As much as Raiders fans will hype up the move, it is hard to fully predict how Carroll is going to fair in Las Vegas. The end of his Seattle Seahawks tenure was uninspiring and he is now entering a situation with no franchise quarterback to speak of.
One coach who is easy to predict is defensive coordinator Patrick Graham. The Raiders re-signed Graham to be the team's defensive coordinator on Wednesday with Carroll and minority owner Tom Brady both being a fan of his work. However, Graham has consistently piloted underwhelming defenses, so Brady and Carroll may be missing the mark.
Raiders re-signing Patrick Graham is great for the LA Chargers
While there is value in having continuity in a coaching staff, sometimes a team has to look itself in the mirror and move on from someone who has not turned in the necessary results. That is the case with Graham, who has led a bottom-10 defense more times than not as an NFL defensive coordinator.
Graham has been with the Raiders since the 2022 season, where Las Vegas ranked 26th in points allowed per game (24.6). The team improved to ninth in 2023 while allowing 19.5 points per game, but fell back down to 25th while allowing 25.5 points per game in 2024.
A similar thing happened in Graham's last tenure as a defensive coordinator. The 2020 New York Giants ranked ninth in points allowed per game with 22.3. In 2021, they fell to 23rd, allowing 24.5 points per game.
Graham's first tenure as a defensive coordinator only lasted one season. The 2019 Miami Dolphins ranked dead last, allowing 30.9 points per game.
All the Raiders have to do is go back and look at history to see that teams improve when Graham leaves. The 2020 Dolphins went from having the worst-scoring defense in the league to ranking sixth in the league. Brian Flores was the head coach in both seasons.
The 2022 Giants didn't see as big of a jump but there was a jump. New York went from 23rd with Graham to 17th without Graham. And even then, that average was skewed by three bad games. New York allowed fewer than 24 points in 12 of the team's 17 games.
At some point the numbers do not lie and the numbers are screaming that Graham is not going to lead a productive Raiders defense in 2025. While there are outlier years on his resume, two-thirds of the time he has led one of the 10 worst defenses in the league.
As a division rival, this is all great news for the LA Chargers.