PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – It may not be exactly the tightness Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy was envisioning when the decision was made to move defensive coordinator Patrick Graham to the sideline on Sunday, but it does illustrate a point. As told by linebacker Patrick Queen.
“He gave me a head-butt on the sideline while I had my helmet on, definitely wasn’t expecting that.”
“OK, it was not like a player head-butt, it was just a little tap,” Graham said with a smile, seemingly uninjured.
It seemed, from both sides, it a very positive situation to, after four games, have the defensive coordinator move to the sideline after a broadcast moment of frustration by TJ Watt about communication with Graham previously.
“You really get a picture of what he wants to call,” Queen said. “Questions that you have or any thoughts that you have, you can go ask him face-to-face and see what he thinks. Just to be able to have all of us on the same page and be able to know what we want.”
“Sometimes as a defense we are out there, (saying) ‘we are seeing this’, ‘we are seeing that’ and he’s like ‘ok’ and (now) we chop it up on the sidelines, draw some (stuff) up on the white board,” said linebacker Nick Herbig. “It was good.”
Being on the sidelines during games was something the coaching staff had discussed with Graham from the beginning. It was a moment where other coaches may have just demanded that players deal with the situation and find other ways to communicate.
“Being pliable, that's an important part of leadership,” Graham said. “You have your principles and things of that nature, but you gotta be able to be pliable and adjust. When it comes down to it with football, we gotta do what we think is best for the team. No different in the workplace, things of the nature. People talk about mental toughness, that's part of being selfless, I mean, so I wanna be a good example of that.”
Graham, while it might seem in interviews one way, said he’s really an introvert. He said he originally wanted to be an offensive line coach, sit in his room, have a dip in, not talk to anybody and do his work. That he’s not a social person, he likes to keep to himself, but he’s not in that role. He’s had to challenge himself to be more outgoing and build relationships.
“It’s better just having him there and seeing where his mind is at because when he’s up in the box, he really only talks to PQ or the coaches on the headset,” Herbig said. “Just having him there and relaying thoughts to each other is nice.”
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It’s part of Graham growing mentally, emotionally, educationally. He’s driven by the challenge to be different, to build relationships. The first-year Steelers defensive coordinator saw that pay off Sunday on the sidelines to the last seconds.
“Even the last play of the game,” Graham said, “the thing that we're trying to build and whether it's myself and the assistant coaches, players, all that, trying to spend so much time together can anticipate what we're gonna do. So you saw that play before when they got the timeout, like we had a certain look. And as soon as I'm thinking about saying that they're (Patrick Queen and Jalen Ramsey) looking right at me saying the next call, I'm like, yep, you're right.”
“I saw their faces, they saw mine. Everybody thumbs up and rock and roll. That was that input in terms of just each other just communicating with one another and just knowing it's right.”
Graham had to make a move, it improved communication, now where does this defense go from here?
Defensive coordinator explains move to field, player reaction
Defensive coordinator explains move to field, player reaction
