Everything suggested Jon Gruden would be awful, but no one listened
By Josh Hill
Jon Gruden is a legendary football personality, but we’re seeing even more evidence that he’s less than a legendary coach.
For years, fans of down-on-their-luck franchises dreamed of coaxing Jon Gruden out of the television booth with visions of Chucky leading them out of the darkness. Our lasting memory of Gruden was, despite nearly a decade of decline, him hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after delivering a Super Bowl to Tampa Bay. That’s the Fool’s Gold Mark Davis paid $100 million for this offseason and he’s unsurprisingly seen a negative return on his investment.
The Jon Gruden Revival has now been on tour for six weeks on two continents, and it’s been an absolute nightmare. After gettings its doors blown off in England on Sunday, Oakland is 1-5 and looks like the worst team in football. The defense is soft and slow (probably because Gruden traded Khalil Mack) and the Derek Carr appears to have been broken. Hope has truly been sucked into a black hole and time is a flat circle — we should have seen this coming.
Rather than adapt his playcalling, Gruden tried to muscle his way to the top of the power structure to try and will his vision into existence. He was never the problem, it was always someone else.
Gruden was a great offensive mind in the mid-90s, and absolutely deserves credit for reinventing the way offenses were run late in the decade. At a time when defenses in the NFL were changing, Gruden was able to create a playbook in Oakland that produced a Top 10 offense in yards and points scored over a three period between 1999 and 2000. He was rightly heralded as a visionary.
But like all things, adaptation is needed for survival, and that’s something that never happened with Gruden. Defenses changed in the early aughts, specifically to combat the growing influence of Gruden’s offensive approach, and the man behind the revolution was left behind. After 2001, Gruden has not produced anything higher than an 18th ranked scoring offense and has only once coached a team to Top 15 yardage totals. Rather than adapt his playcalling, Gruden tried to muscle his way to the top of the power structure to try and will his vision into existence. He was never the problem it was always someone else.
Once Gruden was traded to Tampa Bay, he almost immediately butted heads with general manager Rich McKay who ultimately took the fall once Gruden’s dismantling of Tony Dungy’s team began resulting in losing seasons. Gruden’s moves once he started to throw his weight around in Tampa mirror those he made as soon as he returned to Oakland. He swapped out young Pro Bowl running back Warrick Dunn for veteran Michael Pittman, added aging receiver Keenan McCardell, padded the roster with over-the-hill guys with recognizable-ish names (Rob Johnson, Roman Oben, Ricky Dudley) and drafted rookies who had almost zero impact.
After winning the Super Bowl, Gruden used his clout to slowly strip away staples of the Dungy/McKay era like Warren Sapp, Martin Gramatica, John Lynch, and Rich McKay himself. Without anyone to challenge him, Gruden did things like drafting Cadillac Williams over Aaron Rodgers, choosing Chris Simms (and then Bruce Gradkowski) to be the quarterback of the future, and continued to add guys that he liked without analytics to back up their potential impact on the roster. He didn’t need to defend his decisions, he just needed to be trusted because he was Jon Gruden. For all the changes Gruden made to the Buccaneers in the 2000s, none of them were to his playbook.
It will come as no surprise that the same antics are not working now. Gruden traded away All-Pro pass rusher Khalil Mack, swapped in over-the-hill guys like Jordy Nelson and Doug Martin, and has been resistant to even the hint of change. The only difference this time around is Gruden is feeling the heat, even if Reggie McKenzie is going to be the first scapegoat to be fired for the sins being comitted.
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Al Davis does not get enough credit for keeping Gruden in check during his boom in Oakland. That’s the only time in Gruden’s head coaching career he’s had a general manager that he couldn’t push around, and it’s the only time he’s consistently been good. Once Gruden’s clout swelled, and he became the most powerful man in the room, his teams went downhill. Before Gruden arrived in Tampa the Buccaneers had made the playoffs in four of the last five years; after he took over they made the playoffs three times in seven years. The season he left Oakland, Bill Callahan took the team to its first Super Bowl since 1983. Gruden was a good head coach with a strong personality and at some point, the latter grew so large it consumed the previous.
As much as it must be painful to admit bringing back Gruden was an expensive mistake, there was plenty of market research out there to suggest this very thing would happen. Mark Davis was backed into a corner and fell victim to a snake oil salesman who is the last person in the room to realize it’s empty.