NFL
By: Brock Vierra
If you ask the average Hawaii fan about the tenure of Todd Graham, the answers may differ in diction, but their words will all have the same meaning…failure. Graham has recently taken a high school job in his home state of Texas and Hawaii looks completely different a year after Graham was essentially pushed out of the program. But to say his time in Hawaii was a failure would be a shortsighted statement. Graham achieved a lot, won a lot. If fact, he probably won more than he should have. However, his time in the islands will forever be marked but idiotic statements and an exit that has probably ended his collegiate coaching career. Let’s take a look back at the Todd Graham era.
Todd Graham has had a very interesting and successful collegiate coaching career during his stops at Rice, Tulsa, Pittsburg and Arizona State before he made his way to the islands. Eight winning seasons in twelve years are attributed to Graham, including five bowl wins and a dredging of the Hawaii Warriors in the 2010 Hawaii Bowl with Tulsa. His big break came when Arizona State hired him to replace Dennis Erickson in 2012. A time that saw Arizona State emerge as a sleeper in the Pac-12. He won a division title and ASU finished in the AP Top 25 twice. Since 2000, Arizona State has had only three double-digit win seasons and Graham owns two of them. He also holds a winning record over arch-rival Arizona.
His way to Arizona State came off the heels of controversy. Having parlayed his success at Tulsa into a Power 5 opportunity, Graham was tasked with replacing Dave Wannstedt at Pitt. It was an up-and-down season for the Panthers as they went 6-6. They did blow out #14 South Florida 44-17 but that was about the only highlight of the season. It’s alright, it’s his first year and…he’s gone. Like a deadbeat dad in the middle of the night, Graham was gone. He’d taken the ASU job and he left his former team with a text message basically saying deuces. I doubt Graham will show his face in Pittsburg any time soon but even if he did, I’m not sure that Pitt fans would remember him.
Which should make his exit from Hawaii no surprise. He clearly wasn’t a fit for the islands, Hawaii didn’t have the resources to recruit the players he wanted and he played favorites. His Hawaii is a third-world country because he couldn’t find Dr. Pepper comment was idiotic, he clearly pissed off every player of Polynesian descent and accusations of abuse was a significant contributor to his resignation.
It seemed that Graham was on a quest to de-Hawaiinize the Hawaii Warriors. He pushed out fringe players from the islands, he favored star linebacker Khoury Bethley over Jonah Laulu and Darius Muasau and his transfers fit his ideology from his Arizona State days. He also pulled a Kirk Ferentz by hiring his son Bo Graham to be the team’s offensive coordinator. Bo Graham had his moments and his run schemes were pretty good but his passing concepts were clearly not up to D1 level and his resume doesn’t justify his hire.
Quite frankly, everything seemed poor but when you look at the results on paper, Graham won. Yes he did inherit a team that won 10 games, the 2019 Hawaii Bowl over Zach Wilson and BYU, a Mountain West division title and one of college football’s most prolific offenses but he did lose starters Cole McDonald, JoJo Ward, Cedric Byrd, Jason-Matthew Sharsh, Dayton Furuta, Roe Farris II and Solomon Matautia to name a few before he ever stepped foot on campus. However the roster he inherited had some ballers as well such as standouts Calvin Turner Jr, Nick Mardner, Chevan Cordeiro and Jared Smart.
Graham had a lot going for him but multiple program shortfalls continued to plague the Warriors. Lack of funding, lack of proper, nutritional foods, lack of stipend funds for players, a football facility that ranks near the bottom of the FBS and much more. However these things are not new to the Hawaii program. What was new was COVID. Graham’s first year occurred in 2020, the season stricken by COVID. Hawaii faced many issues like every other team did but the state of Hawaii was under strict COVID lockdown which impacted the Warriors ability to have a remotely normal preseason.
Yet Graham and the Warriors came out swinging. Brining in offensive guru G.J. Kinne as offensive coordinator, the Warriors began the season at Fresno State. Hawaii’s arch rival that they haven’t beaten since 2016, the Bulldogs were led by another offensive guru in Kalen DeBoer. Despite some early struggles, the Warriors smoked Fresno 34-19. With the win, he became the first Hawaii coach to win their first game since Bob Wagner did it in 1987. His first year was an up and down struggle but a surprise victory against rival Nevada, a victory which sunk their conference title hopes and a shocking mulling of Houston in the 2020 New Mexico Bowl (played in Frisco, Texas due to COVID) gave many a sense of hope for the future. Under Graham, Hawaii had a winning season, it’s second bowl win on the mainland ever against a team that had Clayton Tune and Tank Dell, a team that was favored by 14 points, a team playing in their home state, a team that would go 12-2 the following year with a bowl win over Auburn. Stock in Graham was high entering 2021.
2021 came and 2021 went. So did G.J. Kinne who accepted a promotion to UCF as offensive coordinator. In his place, Graham promoted his son Bo and as previously mentioned, he was not great in terms of the passing game. However Hawaii effectively ran the ball behind a 1-2 punch of Dae Dae Hunter and Dedrick Parson. The issue is that UCLA also had an effective runner in Zach Charbonnet. Charbonnet’s three touchdowns sunk Hawaii’s opener in Pasadena 44-10. Hawaii got their first win of the season the following week in a struggle against FCS Portland State before a loss to Oregon State at Corvallis and San Jose State at home. The SJSU game was especially painful as Hawaii failed to complete a last minute drive to win it. Hawaii would suffer some poor losses against underdog UNLV and against #24 San Diego State 17-10. The Grahams and the Warriors would suffer seven losses in 2023. With three of their six wins coming against Portland State and two victorious contests against New Mexico State, the 2023 resume of Hawaii wouldn’t appear to be successful.
Except it was. Hawaii qualified for the 2022 Hawaii Bowl despite a 6-7 record, their fourth straight bowl selection and second straight under Graham. They also had three unexpected victories that I still can’t believe occurred till today. A shootout victory on Senior Night against Colorado State, 50-45. A regular season finale victory against rival Wyoming for the Paniolo trophy in Laramie. It was Hawaii’s first win in Laramie since 1991. Oh and the game wasn’t close, Hawaii smoked the Cowboys, 38-14.
The big win came against arch rival Fresno State. Now this was the best Fresno State team fielded since Davonte Adams and Derek Carr left the Bulldogs for the NFL. The #18th ranked team in the nation, the Bulldogs came to the islands with a 4-1 record. Their only loss was a 31-24 defeat to #11 Oregon in Eugene, a game they should’ve won and it wasn’t a bad defeat considering Oregon went to Columbus the following week to upset #3 Ohio State. The Bulldogs were on a three game winning streak, including a 40-37 win against #13 UCLA at the Rose Bowl and they were lead by one of the top QB talents in the country in Jake Haener.
Hawaii, still under the strict restrictions put forth by the state, were in their makeshift T.C. Ching stadium with no fans. Having had their former home of Aloha Stadium condemned in the offseason, Hawaii had no home fans or home field. They also wouldn’t have their starting QB in Chevan Cordeiro who was out due to injury so Hawaii went with true freshman Brayden Schager. This Fresno offense was complete, Haener was supplemented by hard nosed running back Ronnie Rivers and stud wide receiver Jalen Moreno-Cropper. However the Graham’s put together something special.
Let’s not mince words. Bo Graham’s passing offense, despite Schager’s two passing touchdowns was awful. I’m pretty sure he ran four vert on 90 percent of his plays. However Hawaii’s run game set the tone with a team total of 232 rushing yards. The difference for the Warriors though was the defense. Todd Graham’s hybrid 4-2-5 defense, better known as the “war dog defense” created six turnovers including four interceptions, while picking Haener off at the Hawaii 2 yard line to end Fresno State’s game winning drive. Hawaii won 27-24, giving the program one of it’s biggest wins of all time and Hawaii’s first win over a ranked opponent since 2010.
Graham never coached in the 2021 Hawaii Bowl as Hawaii had to pull out due to a lack of scholarship players. A lack brought forth by a mass exodus from the program via the transfer portal, an exodus that Graham set into motion. When we look back at Todd Graham, the story is simple. He tried to make the team like how he’s done it in the past and it didn’t sit well with Hawaii. He didn’t become a new coach or a new person overnight. This is who he’s always been.
He wanted to turn Hawaii into a mainland program. It showed in how he acted, how he built his team and how he recruited. Now how would he have done in his third year? I don’t know. I would like to think Schager would’ve taken the next step, I would like to think that Hawaii would be bowl eligible but they could also have been completely awful. We will never know.
What I do know is that Graham isn’t the worst coach Hawaii has ever had, he’s not even close. He’s also not close to being the greatest. However we can not ignore the facts and the facts are that he won a lot more than he probably should’ve. The man continuously went toe to toe with some of the best teams in the Mountain West despite having one of the worst jobs in America.
What I wonder is the what if. What if Todd Graham didn’t come in during COVID. He was head coach for almost two years before he coached a game in front of fans. What if he coached in front of a packed Aloha Stadium? What if he was surrounded by the noise and the spirit of the people of Hawaii? What if he actually got to experience Hawaii culture? Maybe his mentality and process would’ve changed. Maybe he would’ve went about things differently. You look back as his press conferences, his interactions with the media and his public appearances and he says and does all the right things. He brought in local kids as preferred walk-ons and played them. He allowed walk-ons to get food meant for scholarship players, something that wasn’t always the case at Hawaii. He maintained a majority of the Hawaii coaching staff from the Nick Rolovich era, he even hired a former Warrior to be his DC in Victor Santa Cruz. What if he was exposed, what if he bought into Hawaii culture? He did a lot of good but that good wasn’t good enough to make up for all the bad he’s done.
Now here we are a year later. Hawaii went with a famous face for their next HC. Local and NCAA legend Timmy Chang returned to his alma mater to help repair a devastated program. Graham returned to his home state and got back to the roots of competitive football. Their paths may never cross again but for two strange years, their paths wrote a chapter of Hawaii football history so rich and so juicy that many diehard fans like me will talk about forever. Todd Graham and Hawaii. What a time.
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