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Every once in while in the NFL you’ll see a coach forge a special bond with a player. Such a bond has been created between New York Giants defensive coordinator Pat Graham and linebacker Lorenzo Carter.
Carter is coming off a season that began with so much promise only to see it go up in smoke after five games when he suffered a season-ending Achilles injury.
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Graham beamed on Thursday when reporters asked about Carter’s progress. The fourth-year linebacker out of Georgia is fully recovered from the injury and appears to have picked up right where he left off last season.
“Lorenzo — again, I’m not going to get emotional or anything, but like I’m very proud of his progress, to be honest with you. Very proud of his progress. I think he looks like a different football player on the field. Now, we’ll see how it comes through,” an obviously emotional Graham said.
Graham explained why Carter’s story hits home the way it has.
“Because you see a guy who — the stress of the, OK, potential this, potential that, all the time. Having a good season last year. I think he had, what, three sacks? Not that sacks are the end all be all, but like he was doing well and then he gets hurt,” Graham said. “He works his way through. He’s in the building all the time. We see him every day and then for him to come out on that field and he looks like a different football player to me than anything I saw in his previous three years.
“I’m just happy for him. I’m happy for him. Again, as a teacher, that’s what we do. I get it’s a business, but just like a teacher getting somebody to understand math or calculus the first time or algebra or go back to just basic arithmetic. You’re happy for that. Like, I’m very happy for these guys… I’m just happy for these guys. That’s what I mean. That’s why I do this. That’s why I do this. I don’t know where else I would get fulfillment, like I do with this coaching thing, to be able to watch these young men fulfill a childhood dream. Just again, I might be being a little dramatic right now, but that’s how I am.”
Carter sees the concern and care that Graham and the coating staff displays.
“Yeah, that’s the thing, they let us know, it’s not just coaches and players, we’re co-workers,” Carter told reporters on Thursday. “We’re all in this thing together. It’s a submarine, it’s us versus the world and as long as we know each other, we all got each other’s back. That just makes it a much easier work environment and just makes it better to want to go to war for each other.”
Graham is not only a solid coach on a personal level, he’s a fine strategist and motivator as well. That is why he is at the top of list of potential head coaches in this league.
“Coach Graham has done great job just trusting the players,” added Carter. “He doesn’t try to play the game himself. He knows that the players are going to go out and do what we have to do to win games and he puts us in the position. I appreciate Coach Graham, everything he’s done, he teaches us the game, he teaches us more than just the X’s and O’s, he teaches us the whole thing and I’ve learned a lot under him.”