Raiders' Pierce, Graham Had a Connection Before LV

Before Las Vegas Raiders Interim Head Coach Antonio Pierce's promotion to his new role, he and Defensive Coordinator Patrick Graham had coached together on defense for 25 games.

It was a match Graham had wanted when he was first brought on as defensive coordinator in February of 2022. The two coaches had been acquainted since 2016 due to their pasts with the New York Giants.

"The first year he [Graham] was with the Giants, I was always -- actually on ESPN at the time -- and I would pop my head in there with the Giants and be around the program," Pierce told our own Hondo S. Carpenter Sr. on Monday. "And Patrick was coaching the defensive line, and a couple of times, I would go in there with JPP [Jason Pierre-Paul] and those guys and joke, and we kind of built a relationship there that year. Then, in 2017, I went back as a consultant to Steve Spagnuolo and worked closely with the linebackers and the front seven, and that's when our bond kind of grew from there. 

"But you could see the mind. You could tell -- he's a D-line coach and those guys are loud, they're all over the place, but he had the mindset and the focus. And obviously, very articulate in how he speaks to get his point across, that you know he'll be a good defensive coordinator."