What made Gruden get back in the game?
Encouragement from his mom and Dick Vermeil led to coach’s NFL return
ALAMEDA, Calif. – Jon Gruden looked genuinely perplexed.
At a news conference Tuesday, he was asked to describe the process by which he decided to give up his gig as an analyst for Monday Night Football and take over as head coach of the Oakland Raiders — nine years after he last coached in the NFL and 16 years since he coached the Raiders.
“It’s a mysterious way that it all came together,” he said at the Raiders training facility.
But Raiders owner Mark Davis, retired coach Dick Vermeil and Gruden himself helped at least partly solve the mystery.
Start with Davis, the team owner who said for each of the past six years he visited Gruden in Tampa and marveled at seeing Gruden wake up at 3 a.m. and watch game tape, often in preparation for Gruden’s job at ESPN.
“It took me six years chasing down Jon,” Davis said with a grin.
During the news conference, Davis thanked Jon Gruden’s mother, Kathy, “for being one of my biggest cheerleaders.” It turned out Davis had a strong ally in his attempt to woo back Gruden.
“I simply encouraged (Gruden) to step into the role he loved the most, that of being a coach,” Kathy Gruden told USA TODAY by text message. “This opportunity came and seemed to be the chance of a lifetime. A perfect fit at a perfect time.”
Noting that Gruden’s passion for breaking down game tape and football never waned over regular visits to Tampa, Davis said he told Gruden he was “wasting his time” in doing anything other than coaching.
Gruden apparently heard the same thing from Vermeil, the retired NFL coach who returned to the sideline after a 15-year absence. Vermeil said he had been encouraging Gruden to get back into coaching for the past few years and sent him at least one text message that read something along the lines of, “Get your ass back in coaching. I waited too long, don’t you do it.”
Vermeil retired from the Philadelphia Eagles in 1982 before taking over the St. Louis Rams in 1997. Three years later he led the franchise to its first Super Bowl title. He predicted the same success for Gruden.
“I just thought a guy with his talent and passion should be coaching the game,” Vermeil told USA TODAY during a phone interview Tuesday. “I left for different reasons. I left because I screwed it up and allowed myself to get emotionally burned out. But (Gruden) got fired and never went back.
“I’ve been encouraging him to go back for a few years. I think he’ll go back and be a better coach than when he left. He’s watched a lot of other people coach. He’s maintained a deep interest and passion for the game, studying the game not only in players but how coaches were coaching and what they were doing, without any pressure on him, so you probably see more than you would if you were coaching. That in itself will help him, plus he’s more mature.”
Vermeil said he thinks Gruden would have returned sooner if not for the rules in the collective bargaining agreement that limit the amount of time and how often teams can practice in pads — not to be overlooked by a coach whose work ethic has been described as maniacal.
In fact, during the news conference
“I simply encouraged (Gruden) to step into the role he loved the most, that of being a coach.” Kathy Gruden Jon Gruden’s mother, via text message, on her son’s return to coaching with the Oakland Raiders
Tuesday, Gruden cited those limitations as issues.
“So it is critical that you spend a lot of time looking at the practice schedules, the meeting schedules, so you can get as much done as possible in a short period of time,” Gruden said. “And I think there’s a real skill of that.”
But bigger clues might have been sitting in front of Gruden — his wife and their three grown sons. Before the news conference, Gruden’s agent, Bob LaMonte, said Gruden walked away from other lucrative coaching offers in part because he wanted to raise his sons.
During the news conference, Gruden thanked his wife and sons for “for supporting me in going after this opportunity. It takes a family effort, I think, to be all in on something like this.”
And then, well, there still was a sense of mystery.
The Raiders’ mystique that all these years later apparently still has a hold on Jon Gruden.
“I feel this is the thing to do,” he said. “This is what I want to do. This is the organization that I want to be a part of. And I’m all in. I only live one time. This is something that I feel deeply, strongly about.”
Yes, there’s also the 10-year contract worth $100 million that the Raiders used to lure Gruden back.
But Gruden seemed to be a man less interested on his bank account than on his drive.
“I’m at a point in my life were I need another challenge,” he said, “and I know I have a lot to prove and I’m eager to prove I can do it.”