The Duquesne football team has an unofficial mantra: “Dukes adjust.”
It’s a nod to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based program’s willingness to adapt and overcome.
At the FCS level of NCAA football, teams don’t benefit from the funds, facilities or services of Power Five FBS schools.
But the Dukes pay no mind.
This fall, Duquesne is battling to defend a Northeast Conference title. And their running backs coach, Paul Grattan, knows better than anyone about making the best of your current situation.
A 2022 graduate of UCLA’s Transformative Coaching and Leadership program, Grattan starred as an offensive lineman for the Bruins, earning All-Pac 12 honors. His performance on the gridiron warranted looks from NFL teams, including the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Grattan worked out for each team at a minicamp. But when the NFL Draft came and went without his name being called, and no contract offer was made, Grattan adjusted.
“I was a little disheartened,” he admits. “But I didn’t give up.”
The Steel City native got back to work, this time training for a spot with the resurrected XFL (now the UFL). Marketing his skills, he made connections with a handful of general managers across the league.
By XFL Draft Day, in 2023, Grattan felt solid about his chances with the fledgling league. But as round one, two, three and four all passed, his patience was tested.
It wasn’t until round six that Grattan was able to breathe a sigh of relief. But with the 46th pick of the day, the Seattle Seadragons selected the former First-Team All-Pennsylvania honoree from Mt. Lebanon High School.
Grattan says the professional playing experience was a shot in the arm following months of uncertainty.
“It was a blessing,” he says. “We lived down in Dallas, we all stayed in a hotel. And it was pretty much just like a college dorm all over again.”
His Seadragons fared well in their inaugural season, compiling a 7-3 overall record good for second place in the XFL North Division.
But as the season progressed, Grattan got to wondering what life would look like at season’s end.
“My plan was to go back and do the XFL again the following season,” Grattan explains. “But I knew I wanted to get into coaching. So I was looking for a way to make that happen somehow.”
He hit the phones. And before long, had a meeting set up with Duquesne head coach Jerry Schmitt.
Unfortunately, the Dukes had no coaching roles available at the time. But Grattan was insistent:
“I told him, let me just come down and be an assistant offensive line coach, for free.”
Schmitt couldn’t refuse.
“We won the NEC title that year,” Grattan says. “And that was actually the first conference title I’ve ever won. I’d never won a title or pretty much anything postseason-wise from the time I was in Little League to high school to my undergraduate career at Villanova and when I played at UCLA and then into the XFL.”
That taste of success was sweet. And at the season’s end, Grattan knew what he had to do when a paid role on the Duquesne staff opened up: adjust.
“I can’t believe the one little meeting where I said, ’Hey, I’ll work for nothing,’ ended up being one of my best decisions I’ve ever made,” Grattan says.
He’s now coaching players in his family backyard — not even 10 minutes from where he grew up in the city of Greenfield.
“I’m still fresh out, so I can still mess with the D-Line and threaten to slap on some pads and (school) them,” he jokes. “But I’ve been able to introduce some newer techniques that the players and staff have really loved.”
He says he’ll often think about his TCL classes when working with athletes:
“When I came to Duquesne, some guys were like, ‘You need to figure out what your style is and what your rules are.’ And I already had my philosophy and my own rules because I’d developed it during the TCL program.”
“And being a new coach and (young) guy, that surprised a lot of people.”
His indirect journey to his current coaching role, influenced by the mentorship of previous coaches, inspired him to instill a similar ethos of adaptability to his work — one that meshes perfectly with Duquense’s “Dukes adjust” motto.
“We adjust through everything,” he adds. “No matter what, if something’s going really good or something’s really bad, we’re going to adjust to make sure that we continue to stay our course.
“Just this week, it was downpouring in Pittsburgh, so we didn’t want to get the guys sick outside in the rain and 35-degree weather. So the Dukes adjusted. We went into the rec basketball court and threw our entire practice out there as all the students walked by to do their workouts at our campus’ Power Center.
“It’s a mentality and a way of approaching life,” Grattan says. “And it really courses through our team’s veins.”
The son of Patricia and Paul, Grattan has three older sisters, all of whom he says are arguably better athletes than himself. At Villanova and UCLA, Grattan started in all 32 contests he played in. His uncle, Eugene “Ougie” Grattan, a Duquesne graduate, inspired him to reach out to the Dukes. Says his favorite TCL course was coach Sue Enquist and professor Annamarie Francois’ Effective Principles of Coaching and Leadership.