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Mike Tomlin's exit opened the door for a coaching search that ended with Mike McCarthy taking the Steelers job, and McCarthy wasted no time filling his defensive staff. He hired Patrick Graham, who spent the last four years running the Raiders defense, to take over in Pittsburgh. This isn't a retread hire or a name plucked off a list of available coordinators. Graham is one of the more interesting defensive minds in the league, and he's walking into a division that's about to feel his fingerprints on every offensive game plan.

The Scheme

Graham runs a 3-4 base, but treat that as a starting point, not a description. He's pragmatic to the point of being unpredictable. His weekly install is built around what the opponent's protection scheme struggles with, not around forcing his personnel into a static system.

The signature piece is his simulated pressure package. Graham puts six or seven bodies near the line, then drops interior defenders or linebackers into coverage while sending DBs and nickels on the blitz. Offensive lines that set protections based on pre-snap looks get exposed here, because the guy they think is coming isn't, and the guy they didn't account for is.

He's also unafraid to bring the house on early downs. Cover 0 looks on first down aren't common around the league, most coordinators save max pressure for third-and-long, but Graham uses it to blow up run blocking schemes and manufacture second-and-long before the offense has settled into a rhythm. Pair that with fire zone concepts out of Cover 1 and Cover 3 (aggressive man look before the snap, then a bail into deep zone after it) and you get a defense built specifically to mess with a quarterback's post-snap reads.

None of this is theoretical. In 2023 he took one of the league's most cash-strapped defenses and got Las Vegas to ninth in scoring defense. In 2024, the Raiders were top 15 in total defense, pass defense, and run defense, and 18 different players recorded at least half a sack, a franchise record that tells you everything about how much movement and disguise was baked into the weekly plan. Maxx Crosby made back-to-back Pro Bowls under him. Robert Spillane put up a career-high 158 tackles in 2024. Go back further and Graham took a Giants defense that finished 27th in scoring in 2019 and had it at 9th his first year in charge. He's also got two AFC Championships and a Super Bowl ring from his Patriots years. This is a coach with a track record of making units better fast, not a coordinator hoping it clicks eventually.

What It Means for the AFC North

Graham inherits a Steelers defense anchored by T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward, and Jalen Ramsey, but he's walking into a division with three of the more explosive, quarterback-driven offenses in football. Simulated pressure and Cover 0 on early downs is a bet that Pittsburgh's front seven can win one-on-ones fast enough to make the disguise pay off. Against this division, that bet gets tested every single week.

Ravens

Lamar Jackson is exactly the kind of quarterback Graham's disguise-heavy approach is designed to slow down, and exactly the kind of quarterback who eats disguise-heavy defenses alive when he reads it right. Jackson's mobility turns a busted protection into a scramble drill instead of a sack, which blunts some of the value of Graham's pressure math. I'm not worried about Jackson's fantasy floor against Pittsburgh twice a year. If anything, aggressive man coverage on the outside creates the exact scramble windows where Jackson has always done his most damage.

Derrick Henry is the one who should feel this the most. Graham's early-down Cover 0 looks are built to disrupt exactly the gap scheme run concepts Baltimore leans on. Henry's game is predicated on defenses respecting the run enough to play honest fronts, and Graham has shown he'd rather sell out to stop the run on early downs and live with the coverage risk. Expect more negative and no-gain runs against Pittsburgh than Henry is used to seeing, even if the overall workload stays the same.

Zay Flowers benefits more than people will expect. Fire zone coverage bails into deep thirds after showing man, which tends to open up intermediate crossers and option routes, exactly what Flowers wins with after the catch. Mark Andrews is the swing piece. If Graham's blitz packages pull linebackers out of underneath zones to disguise pressure, Andrews becomes one of the easier check-down answers in the league for Jackson. That's a real bump for a player who needs volume more than big plays at this point in his career.

Browns

Whoever wins the Cleveland quarterback competition, and as of mid-July that's still genuinely unsettled between Shedeur Sanders and Deshaun Watson, is walking into two games a year against a defense built specifically to confuse young or rebuilding passers. Sanders had real moments as a rookie (1,400 yards, a 7-10 TD-INT ratio in eight starts) but simulated pressure lives on hesitation, and Sanders needed reps before he trusted what he was seeing post-snap. Watson's issue is different: he hasn't played a full season since 2023, and he's now trying to read Cover 1 disguised as Cover 0 coming off multiple Achilles surgeries. Neither guy is walking into Pittsburgh with an edge.

Quinshon Judkins is worth talking about on his own. He's working back from the dislocated ankle and fractured fibula that ended his rookie year early, and by his own account he's got the explosion back. A retooled offensive line should open up more room than he saw last season (827 yards on limited opportunity as a rookie), which matters against a defense like Graham's that wants to sell out against the run on early downs. Judkins has to win at the line of scrimmage fast, because Pittsburgh isn't going to let him get comfortable.

Harold Fannin led the Browns in every meaningful receiving category last year (107 targets, 72 catches, 731 yards, seven total touchdowns) and he's now the unquestioned TE1 with David Njoku gone. He's the safety valve in an offense that doesn't know who its quarterback is yet, and safety valves are exactly what benefit from a defense that blitzes as often as Graham's does. I'd bank Fannin as one of the more stable weekly floors on this roster regardless of who's throwing him the ball.

Denzel Boston and KC Concepcion are rookies stepping into an offense that's still figuring out its passer. That's already a tough runway. Add a defense that disguises coverage as well as Pittsburgh's now will, and I'm not in a rush to bet on either rookie producing consistently against this specific matchup in year one. Watch the tape in camp before you buy either as a confident streaming option in division games.

Bengals

This is the offense in the division built to make Graham sweat. Joe Burrow is healthy, both Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins are locked into long-term extensions, and the offensive line returns all five starters. Burrow processes pressure as fast as anyone in football, which is the one profile simulated pressure struggles against. When a quarterback identifies the extra rusher before the snap and gets the ball out on time, disguise stops mattering. I like Cincinnati's passing game to be the least disrupted attack Pittsburgh sees in the division, twice a year.

Chase led the NFL with 185 targets last season even with instability at quarterback behind him. With Burrow back for a full season, that target share isn't dropping, it's just getting more efficient. Higgins is the one who actually profiles as a beneficiary of Graham's fire zone concepts specifically. Aggressive pre-snap man looks that bail into zone tend to isolate the outside receiver against a corner playing off-technique, and Higgins has built his whole game on winning contested catches in exactly that kind of coverage.

Chase Brown is the wildcard. Graham's defenses have historically been vulnerable on the ground when they commit extra rushers and get gashed on the backside, and Brown's vision as a one-cut runner is well-suited to punish exactly that kind of overcommitment. If Cincinnati's offensive line holds up the way it's supposed to, Brown could have his best receiving-down usage of his career simply because Graham's disguise packages create more matchup soft spots underneath than a standard front would.

Bottom Line

Graham's arrival makes Pittsburgh's defense more interesting on paper than it's been in years, but the AFC North isn't a division where disguise-heavy pressure comes free. Burrow's offense is built to punish exactly this kind of defense. Jackson's legs turn busted protection into positive plays instead of sacks. The Browns are the one offense that should genuinely struggle, mostly because of the uncertainty at quarterback rather than anything specific Graham does. For dynasty purposes, the players who gain the most are the checkdown and intermediate options who live in the soft spots simulated pressure creates: Andrews, Fannin, and Higgins all get a quiet bump. The ones who should be downgraded slightly on early-down usage are the bell-cow runners, Henry most of all, who'll see more stacked boxes and disrupted gaps than they're used to.

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