Dedication hasn't been a problem since, as his career arc proves.

Urged by his position coach at Yale, Duane Brooks (who's now at Dartmouth), to give coaching a try as a way to pay for an MBA, Graham – a sociology major who had bailed on his original plan to get a degree in chemical engineering – also saw it as an escape from a public relations consulting gig that had him writing articles, if he remembers correctly, on Hobart deli slicers.

So he latched on with Wagner as a graduate assistant coach, and he's never left the profession.

"Within a month, I realized, OK, this is what I want to do," he said. "This is how I'm going to pay back football for helping me so much in my life, and 16, 17 years later, I'm still a class short of my MBA, so that's what happened."

His college stops included Richmond, Notre Dame and Toledo before breaking into the NFL with the Patriots in 2009. Seven seasons in New England were followed by two years with the Giants before joining the Packers. He has coached defensive linemen or linebackers for all but a couple of seasons along the way.

His self-assigned debt to football stems from the impact all of his coaches, dating back to the Pop Warner days, had on him. Graham didn't share personal specifics, but part of that impact is evident in the way he thinks about the game.

Introduced to it in a straightforward, fundamental way, Graham never strays far from that foundation as a coach no matter how much schemes and trends evolve.

Ask Graham about the different things inside linebackers are being asked to do in the current world of endless sub-packages and hybrid players, and he'll emphasize that it's still about doing what they've always done.

"Guys have to get off blocks," he said. "That hasn't changed. It's not going to change. You have to get off blocks. No matter how much people, whether it's the media or people outside, are saying it's a space game, you have to get off the block to win the game."

But don't take that to mean Graham ignores how creative backfield alignments and stand-up tight ends make an inside linebacker's job different. To Graham, defenders still must do the same things, they just have to be trained to read things differently.

"The key thing to me is getting their eyes in the right place," Graham said. "There might be a little bit more going on with the eyes for those guys, but get their eyes in the right place, you'll be OK.