Something slightly off topic that has me curious. What is up with Jay Gruden and his constant interviews/work/contributions to our local media guys? He seems like he is pretty much non stop working with Kevin Sheehan, Grant Paulsen, Junkies, Chris Russell to provide insight to our current team and situation. While I suppose he provides honest feedback and a look under the hood, it feels weird to me that the most recently fired coach of this team and a coach who was equally berated and more disliked than Rivera has so much to comment on.
It’s not like he was wildly successful here or anywhere else like many coaches have gone on to do so elsewhere. Won the division once, at 9-7 in a bad year for the division and got smoked in the playoffs. Had a second “winning season” where we went 8-7-1 and missed the playoffs then had the team quit on him after starting 0-5 in his year he got fired. Yet last night I saw Grant Paulsen holding water for him on twitter saying he brought us back to back winning seasons. Which I guess is true but still kind of lame to claim that imo. He followed that up with a 1-15 season as OC with the Jags in 2020 and had a Offensive Consultant gig with the Rams which felt more like a branch extended to him from McVay more than anything.
I also never see him interview/work with the national guys at all. I never hear or see him on Dan Patrick, Eisen, NFL Network, any ESPN shows, Cowherd, etc… He only works with our media. And I don’t think he’s in media himself. I don’t necessarily dislike him but I also don’t really care what he has to say. I sure as fuck don’t have rose colored glasses about this team previous to Rivera. Kirk carried Jay and not the other way around. And Ron was ultimately brought in to fix some (mostly Dan’s fuck ups) of Jay’s mistakes. Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way but I want no parts of Rivera calling in and doing interviews when he’s let go. Also seems like a grimey thing to do against another coach unless you’re retired or something. Idk fuck the Cowboys. Let’s Make Thanksgiving Fun Again
He lives is the local area and has existing relationships with the local media. Convenience all around.
He was 6-3 with Alex Smith before losing both Smith and McCoy within 2 games. If either was healthy, that would have been a playoff team. With Smith, probably a 10+ win team. We were winning ugly but there was no one strong in the division and we had mostly divisional matchups and weak teams left. There were a lot of issues with his on the field product, but he was still miles better than Ron. I was anti-Gruden during his reign, but I look back on those days more fondly now.
Umm that 9-7 is better than anything RR has with this team. If there is an audience, he will get called for interviews. Simple as that.
He’s a guy that’s a good source of info, and not doing anything else. Makes absolute sense they’d be interviewing him.
Its one thing to be good at football. its another thing to be good at all the stuff it takes to run a team.
If you get to a HC position you probably know a lot of the general football stuff.
So when you fail out of the HC part, you are still very capable of speaking intelligently on the X&Os, the “this is why in the business they are doing that”, on the “I can tell you about that guy cause I knew him, I’ve been in the room with him”, on the “here’s how that happened, I was there when it did”
AND you have name recognition that makes it worth saying “today we’re interviewing so and so”
and what else are you doing? You aren’t coaching. Might as well do some radio spots.
In hindsight compared to Ron I really liked Jay as a HC. Our defense was still awful but at least Jay did his job and had a good offense. Ron is a defensive minded HC who gets to choose his players and still has a terrible defense every year and can’t finish a season with a winning record. Jay wasn’t the one who wanted to take Haskins either so imagine if he had the opportunity to actually get the players he wanted. I’d take Jay over Ron any day
All of these coaches are professionals, like life, sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don’t . But the intent is honest. I enjoy his take on the game every week. Not many coaches do that.
I think I saw him at the JRAD show at the Anthem Saturday night
I take his perspective with a grain of salt, somewhat. But it’s still kind of interesting to hear what he has to say, given his knowledge of the team’s history… A lot of the roadblocks he faced in terms of the front office are still around, at least until Harris gets a chance to truly clean house.
His brother is jon gruden who is blacklisted by NFL and public for being a bigot…it would be a good look by the media to bring him on….