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Giants Patrick Graham Drawing Buzz as Potential Head Coaching Candidate

Patrick Graham has worked wonders with the Giants defense, so much so that the team might not have him for much longer if other clubs come calling with a potential head coaching opportunity.

The Bill Belichick coaching tree hasn’t exactly done well once its members have left New England, but when it comes to the Giants, where Belichick got his NFL coaching debut, New York has been able to get the ripest fruit from that Belichick New England tree.  

Besides head coach Joe Judge, another guy flying under the radar until recently when his name was brought up as a potential head coaching candidate is defensive coordinator Patrick Graham. 

Although Graham isn't an NFL head coach--yet--the 41-year-old's star has been rapidly rising thanks to the job he's done with meshing together several new faces and managing a revolving door at critical positions like cornerback and edge rusher to form a cohesive defensive unit.

The head coaching consideration is well deserved. Not only has Graham’s Giants defense consistently been in the top-10 league-wide in several significant categories—average total yards allowed (10th), rushing yards (4th), sacks per pass attempt (10th), red zone (6th), goal-to-go (tied for eighth) and points allowed (9th)—his approach to building a defensive game plan pretty much mirrors Judge’s approach to managing a team that has endeared Graham to his players.

“I just think his willingness to keep working, not to say, ‘Ah, I’ve got it. I’m the best coordinator. I’m up for a head coaching job. I’m going to just run what I ran last week, it was a masterpiece,’” said defensive back Logan Ryan on what makes Graham so special. 

“No, he’s going to go back to the lab, come out with 25 new defenses and we’re going to try to run them and see what looks good and what doesn’t. He’s not afraid to have his players’ input on the game plan. I feel like it’s a cooperative effort, but at the same time he’s up in the lab drawing up defenses giving us ways to win.”

On camera, Graham comes across as a happy-go-lucky type of man who is always smiling, always pleasant, and humble. However, behind the scenes, Graham, like Judge, has a bit more fire to his personality.

“Oh yeah. He’s a guy that’s straight to the point, whether it’s, alright you know when it’s time to have fun, you know when it’s time to be serious, and you definitely know when you messed up,” said linebacker Blake Martinez. 

“That’s something that he’s always been a big kind of advocate towards, that you’re going understand why you messed up, he’s going to make it known. But he’s also going to teach you how to not mess up the next time.”

“Pat has a lot of depth to him,” noted Judge, who hired Graham after becoming enthralled with how the Yale graduate, in his first season as an NFL defensive coordinator last year with Miami, managed to get that unit trending upward despite losing players due to various circumstances.

“A lot of times, me and Pat really challenged each other working together. There were arguments and different philosophical questions we had to answer. There were a lot of times when we had to shed some weight in the offseason, walking around the field in the spring before the players got back, and just have a lot of talks about just how to build a team and what we really believed in, what we think our priorities to accomplish in terms of setting a culture.” 

Those talks laid the foundation for success that the Giants are hoping to ride as they continue to make their case for the NFC East title, a case that continues this weekend against the Arizona Cardinals. 

For his part, Graham isn’t puffing out his chest about the talk surrounding him as a potential head coaching candidate and instead has his priorities in line.  

“I’m not smart enough to think ahead of today. I’m trying to get better today,” Graham said. “I need to get ready for third-down versus Arizona on Sunday. I can’t even think about it like that, to be honest with you. That’s all I’m really focused on. … I can’t think about that stuff, to be honest with you.”

That's good news for the Giants, who are making a strong push for their first postseason berth, a quest strongly supported by a defense that is 5-2 this year when holding opponents to 20 points or less.

It’s mostly thanks to Graham's ingenuity, but of course, the modest Graham won’t push his way to the front of the line to receive his share of the credit.

That is, if he even decides to get on the line at all.

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