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Raiders head coach
Jon Gruden
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When I first approached Raiders head coach Jon Gruden about wanting to sit down to talk
to him, he was more than willing, standing there after practice in his silver and black
pullover and visor, the gleam in his eye as bright and piercing as I had imagined.
Then I informed him that I was hoping to do it when he got to work on a typical day,
that being a little after 4:00 in the morning. To those of us mere mortals (not to mention
journalists), that represents making a severe commitment. I’m not a coffee drinker,
but crawling out of bed when Jon Gruden does, even for a day, had the potential to turn me
into a java junkie.
Gruden glanced up, raised an eyebrow and gave me a crooked smile. "You sure?"
he asked. "It’s dark, man. It’s just me and a bunch of stray cats in the
parking lot."
We laughed, and although I knew I would second-guess myself while staring at the alarm
clock the next morning, this was a necessity. To see perhaps the hottest commodity in the
football coaching world at work when most everyone else is sound asleep is a rare treat
indeed.
In the span of less than two years, Gruden has led a Silver & Black revival in
northern California, been arguably within a shoulder injury to QB Rich Gannon of advancing
to the Super Bowl, made People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People list and
served as the subject of never-ending speculation surrounding the coaching vacancy at
Notre Dame.
In the midst of it all, and almost suddenly, Gruden has become one of the most
recognizable coaches in all of sports and quite an icon. As the youngest head coach in the
league at 38, he relates to his players in ways that are hard to fathom for coaches from a
far different generation, and his practice schedules and game plans are meticulously
organized.
But Gruden doesn’t feel overwhelmed. He’s there with the stray cats because
he wants to be. He doesn’t really have any long-term goals and says he just lives
life day to day, having fun and soaking up the experience as he goes. Things are simple in
his world. He wants to be a good dad to his three young sons and a good husband to his
wife. He wants to coach, and he wants to win.
"Other than that, I’m a pretty shallow guy," he says. "I’m not
a real deep, philosophical person. I don’t have any long-term objectives. It’s
like the Bon Jovi song. You just wanna live your life while your livin’, you know
what I mean?"
Gruden’s fascination with football didn’t take long to develop. Gruden’s
dad, Jim, spent plenty of time in the coaching profession, and Jon went to high school in
South Bend, Ind., while Jim was an assistant at Notre Dame. A young Jon would play catch
with his idols from the Fighting Irish before practices would start, and he flaunted
enough Notre Dame apparel to be made fun of in school.
"Jiminy Christmas, the places I was able to go and see when I was a kid, it’s
not hard to understand why I love the game," Gruden says. "And it’s
sincere. You come to work every day and see Eric Allen and (Charles) Woodson playing
corner against (Jerry) Rice and (Tim) Brown, it gets your blood pumping. It really does.
"My mom and dad, they didn’t really force anything on us," Gruden says
of himself and his two brothers. "They encouraged us to find something we liked to
do. That was their goal for all of us."
It didn’t take much encouraging for Gruden to be swayed toward the gridiron. His
high school friends knew he had a mind for the game, and despite the fact his college
career at Dayton never extended beyond the role of backup quarterback, Gruden’s
enthusiasm for the game and quest for knowledge were unmatched among his peers. At a time
when kids that age aren’t sure of anything except what they want on their pizza, he
was sure what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
"That was the hard part about being a high school student for me," Gruden
says. "I’d sit in algebra and geometry, and I’d sit in trigonometry, and
I’d say, ‘What am I gonna do with this?’ That’s when I was a deep
thinker. I pretty much knew that my goals were to always be a coach. I wasn’t a bad
student, but I had a hard time getting interested in some things as a young person.
That’s the No. 1 challenge that I really think everybody has — finding something
they really want to do."
Gruden’s passion and intensity are as noticeable in his on-field demeanor as they
are in his voice.
His facial contortions make for great television, and his game-face likeness to the
Chucky doll from the "Child’s Play" movies has taken on a life of its own
in Oakland.
Reading Gruden’s lips when cameras are on him often can be enough to make Tony
Soprano blush, but Gruden says he’s worked toward reducing the unpleasantries.
"My vocabulary’s increased now, so I’ve reduced some of those adjectives
of the past," he says, quietly laughing at himself. "I’m much more composed
now.
"I’ve always been a very emotional guy. When I play golf and shank my 4-iron,
I get very upset. When I’m playing Wiffle ball in the backyard, and the neighbor kids
come over and beat Deuce (the nickname for his oldest son, Jon II) and I, I get upset. I
don’t swear, but I … you know."
Gruden is quick to point out that he gets excited when things go well too. He’s
the first to pump his fist or give a guy a high-five, and he showed off his vertical jump
when the Raiders clinched the AFC West with their Week 14 win in San Diego. It’s just
hard to be stoic when you’re Jon Gruden.
Gruden describes himself as a regular kid while growing up and admits that some people
may still describe him as such, in part because of his energy and almost boyish looks. He
cracks jokes, exhibits more honesty in a day than most coaches do in a year and has been
known to run pass routes in practice to show how it’s done, even mix it up in live
blocking drills.
TE Roland Williams, who signed with the Raiders last offseason, finds it easy to see
why Oakland is becoming a hotbed for free agents.
"(Gruden’s passion) is something that’s so simple but is so underrated
in this day and age with the NFL, how it is with all the politics and the salary cap and
all these things," Williams says. "But here comes Coach Gruden with a
schoolboy-like love of the game that I can relate to."
As he does with all of his players and coaches on staff, Gruden does not shy away from
lending an ear to those who need it. Williams said Gruden was there for him when his
grandmother passed away during training camp, and that he is always willing to offer
helpful advice on how he thinks Williams can become a better player.
"I love him for that, and as long as he’s here, I’ll stay,"
Williams says.
While Gruden is well-known for his open-door policy, he’s also the type of coach
who rarely has to tell people something twice. Take for instance his approach with the
supremely talented but often troubled Darrell Russell. After a practice last week, Gruden
was asked if he believed Russell’s inspired play of late had anything to do with his
pending suspension from the league for another alleged violation of the league’s
substance-abuse policy. Gruden said he thought it had more to do with the fact that if
Russell didn’t pick it up a notch, "he knows ol’ Jonny’s going to be
banging on his door."
Gruden believes that while some players need a pat on the back, others can stand the
occasional kick in the butt. With all the distractions and pressure on professional
athletes, you just have to know which one.
"That’s why you try and take an interest in them all personally," Gruden
says. He admits that isn’t always the easiest thing to do when he becomes enamored
with scheming for the next game. But book work and meetings don’t supersede the bond
with his players.
"I enjoy the players and the camaraderie of football and the spirit of the
games," Gruden says, his eyes all lit up. "I enjoy it all. I like the adversity
too. I like it hot in the kitchen."
Sitting in Gruden’s dark office at such an hour, it’s hard to imagine he has
the home life he does. Boxes of game tapes litter the floor and shelves, plays are drawn
up on the board above his desk and the only light in the room is what is coming from
television and computer screens that are showing selected bits and pieces of a Titans game
from earlier this season. He is a football coach through and through. But Gruden
acknowledges that he knows when it’s time to go home and spend time with the family,
and when he does, he zones out football. When the offseason hits, however, he admits his
mind can wander back to the pigskin.
"I’ve got my own little office in my house, and sometimes when I can’t
sleep, instead of lying in bed, I just come downstairs and get out an old St. Louis Rams
red-zone tape and see what they’re doing and maybe try and generate an idea or two.
It’s like Christopher Columbus, man. You’re always trying to discover
things."
Gruden would eventually like to help his kids discover football as well, but he’s
not about to pressure them. His oldest son, Jon II, came with him to practice a few weeks
ago, and after some prompting, he developed a fondness for blowing the horn to signal a
change in drills.
"Letting them have a little bit of what I had as a kid is something I’m
really looking forward to," Gruden says. "For the time being, I’m kind of
living it alone, trying to get my kids interested in it. Right now, unfortunately, they
just like dinosaurs and trucks. They’re not much into ‘23 scat protection.’
"
The former Eagles offensive coordinator arrived in Oakland in 1998 and took a team
notorious for underachieving to the brink of something great in the blink of an eye. He
transformed the locker room, keeping the players he believed showed the necessary effort
and enthusiasm and trimming the fat that kept Oakland from competing for all the marbles
in the past.
"You have to sell your system, sell yourselves as coaches and make them understand
that we’re here to help them and work together," Gruden says. "We try and
create an environment where these guys actually like coming in here, and I hope they do,
because that’s important to me. But at the same time, there are standards that
we’ve all got to live up to. And if you can’t row that boat with the rest of us,
we’re probably going to have to get somebody else in position to take those oars.
That’s our job."
Gruden credits the Raider mystique as the big reason for Oakland’s recent rise in
popularity among free agents, but it would be naïve to think he’s not the driving
force for many to want to relocate to the Bay Area. Gruden has had players come up to him
after games, asking to "hook me up out there."
"Think about it. Here’s Jerry Rice. Jerry friggin’ Rice. He’s like
Red Grange, he’s like the living … he’s the man, and he wants to play
here?" Gruden says of the future Hall of Famer’s move across the bay this
summer. "I said, ‘I think we can work something out.’ "
Pretty soon, it will be up to Raiders owner Al Davis to work something out in order to
avoid the public scrutiny of losing his prized possession. Gruden will enter the final
year of his contract in 2002, and so far, there is little talk of an extension that would
pay him the big dollars he will command. What that figure is has yet to be determined, but
his value to the organization is unmistakable.
"He’s as much a part of the Raiders as the shield," one fan said.
As for his value to his players, well, Williams put it best.
"Who else would you rather play for than Coach Gruden? The man, I love him."
Those stray cats in the parking lot may be the only ones in Oakland who don’t know
what kind of company they’re in. |
