Background and career
Jon David Gruden (born August 17, 1963) is an American former football coach and media personality, currently employed by Barstool Sports. After beginning his coaching career in the college ranks and working as a position coach and as an offensive coordinator in the National Football League (NFL) for the Philadelphia Eagles, he held his first head coaching position with the Raiders during their Oakland tenure from 1998 to 2001, where he won two consecutive division titles and made an AFC Championship Game appearance. Gruden was traded by Raiders owner and general manager Al Davis to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002, which he led to their first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XXXVII the same season. At age 39, he was the then-youngest head coach to win the Super Bowl. He served as Tampa Bay's head coach through 2008, setting the franchise record for wins, but made only two further playoff runs. After his firing from the Buccaneers, Gruden was featured as an analyst for ESPN's Monday Night Football broadcasts from the 2009 to the 2017 seasons. In 2018, Gruden returned to the Raiders as their head coach. He led the team until his resignation during the 2021 season after it was publicly revealed that he wrote and sent many racist, misogynistic, and homophobic emails between 2011 and 2018. In 2023, Gruden was hired by the New Orleans Saints as an offseason consultant, assisting the coaching staff with installing their offense upon the signing of Derek Carr, Gruden’s starting quarterback in his second stint with the Raiders.
Gruden was born on August 17, 1963, in Sandusky, Ohio, into a family of Slovene descent. His father, Jim, later served as a professional football regional scout, quarterbacks coach, and director of player personnel for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Gruden's younger brother, Jay, played and coached in the Arena Football League for the Tampa Bay Storm and Orlando Predators, and was the head coach of the Washington Redskins. His other brother, James, is a radiologist at UNC School of Medicine. Gruden was raised Catholic and was a Cleveland Browns fan growing up. At age 15, he attended Clay High School in South Bend, Indiana, home to the University of Notre Dame, where Jim served as an assistant to head coach Dan Devine. After graduating in 1982, Gruden attended and played quarterback for Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. After one season at Muskingum, he transferred to the University of Dayton. At Dayton, Gruden was a three-year letterman and backup quarterback for the Flyers under coach Mike Kelly and was a teammate of U.S. Senator Jon Husted. Gruden never saw much playing time, but the Flyers posted a 24–7 record during his three seasons at the University of Dayton. Gruden graduated with a degree in communications in 1986.
After graduating from the University of Dayton, Gruden was hired as a graduate assistant coach at the University of Tennessee during the 1985–86 season. After his time with the Volunteers, Gruden spent two years as the quarterbacks coach at Southeast Missouri State. He then moved to the University of the Pacific in 1989 as offensive assistant as the tight ends coach. Walt Harris was the offensive coordinator at Tennessee, where Gruden was one of his graduate assistant coaches, and later hired him at Pacific. In 1990, Gruden was a special assistant with the San Francisco 49ers under quarterbacks coach Mike Holmgren. In March 1991, Gruden became the wide receivers coach for the University of Pittsburgh under head coach Paul Hackett.
In January 1992, at age 28, Gruden was hired by Mike Holmgren, his former boss at the San Francisco 49ers, to be the special offensive assistant/wide receivers coach with the Green Bay Packers. After three seasons in Green Bay, Gruden became the offensive coordinator of the Philadelphia Eagles under former Packers assistant coach Ray Rhodes. Gruden was chosen by the owner and general manager of the Oakland Raiders, Al Davis, to be the Raiders' new head coach for the 1998 season.
Under Gruden, the Raiders posted consecutive 8–8 seasons in 1998 and 1999, and leapt out of last place in the AFC West. After uniting with journeyman quarterback Rich Gannon, Gruden led the Raiders to the top of the AFC West and they made the playoffs in 2000 and 2001. Oakland finished 12–4 in the 2000 season, the team's most successful season in a decade, and its first division title since 1990, ultimately reaching the AFC Championship, where they lost, 16–3, to the eventual Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens. In 2001, the Raiders would return to the postseason with a 10–6 record, but in the AFC Divisional Round a negated fumble proved costly as they were defeated, 16–13, in overtime by the eventual Super Bowl champions New England Patriots. While Gruden was with the Raiders, Gruden acquired his nickname "Chucky" from Raiders defensive lineman Grady Jackson, who thought that the coach looked like the fictional character "Chucky" in the 1988 slasher movie Child's Play.
After compiling a 40–28 win–loss record (including playoffs) in four seasons with the Raiders, Gruden replaced the fired Tony Dungy as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002, via a high-stakes trade that included Tampa Bay's 2002 and 2003 first-round draft picks, 2002 and 2004 second-round draft picks, and $8 million in cash. According to one source, Davis detailed the trade as such: "I never liked it when teams would interfere with coaches under contract...Tampa Bay came to me and they said they wanted Gruden...I felt that I put the price tag so high that they wouldn't agree to it. And they did. Gruden is no longer our coach." Gruden signed a five-year contract with the Buccaneers worth $17.5 million. The Buccaneers' search for a head coach had taken more than two months, and Tampa Bay had expressed an interest in Gruden, but Davis had originally refused to release him from his contract. The team subsequently interviewed several other coaches and believed a deal was in place with Bill Parcells, before Parcells backed out, reportedly because his choice for General Manager, Mike Tannenbaum, told him not to accept the job because of the salary cap difficulties that Tampa Bay was about to endure. With the franchise's search floundering, the fact that the coach who the Buccaneers wanted had only one year remaining on his deal, and the immediate hire of Dungy by the Indianapolis Colts, many fans and sports commentators began to openly question if the Buccaneers had made the right move by dismissing Dungy. Only a big splash hire could quiet the storm, and this may have been the primary motivation for the Buccaneers to give up as much as they did to acquire Gruden. Immediately after arriving in Tampa Bay, Gruden significantly retooled the offense with the addition of numerous free agents. His determination to fix the under-performing offense, so often maligned during Dungy's tenure, inspired Tampa's defense to another #1 ranking, which helped the team to a 12–4 season. Both the offense and defense hit their stride in the playoffs; the Buccaneers posted a playoff per-game point differential of 23 points per game in victory, tied with the 1992 Dallas Cowboys for the highest average playoff margin of victory by a Super Bowl winner in the free agency era. Fans were especially satisfied with a victory in the NFC Championship against the Philadelphia Eagles, the team that had defeated Tampa Bay in the wild-card round two years running by the combined score of 52–12, and Gruden was especially satisfied with a dominant win over his old team, the Raiders, in Super Bowl XXXVII. Despite the Super Bowl win, there were many who attributed Gruden's win primarily to the defense that coach Tony Dungy and defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin had created during Dungy's tenure with the Buccaneers. Gruden, for his part, publicly and graciously thanked Dungy for his contributions upon accepting the Lombardi Trophy at the Super Bowl XXXVII postgame ceremony. The victory made Gruden the youngest head coach to win the Super Bowl at age 39. This record would first be surpassed in Super Bowl XLIII by Mike Tomlin, who previously served under Gruden as the Buccaneers' defensive backs coach, and then by Sean McVay in Super Bowl LVI. Gruden's mantra for the 2002 season was "Pound the Rock", a reference to commitment to the running game. Upon returning to Tampa after winning Super Bowl XXXVII, he led a capacity crowd at Raymond James Stadium in chanting the phrase. However, it seemingly disappeared from the lexicon the following year, and was not aggressively marketed or displayed on stadium video boards. Unable to afford replacements, the following season saw the team decimated by injuries to many of the Super Bowl stars, including Joe Jurevicius, Greg Spires, Shelton Quarles, and Brian Kelly, as well as acrimony with highly paid veterans such as Warren Sapp and wide receivers Keyshawn Johnson and Keenan McCardell. The Buccaneers finished 7–9 in 2003 and 5–11 in 2004 to become the first team to have consecutive losing seasons after winning the Super Bowl. A particular low point during this period occurred in a Monday Night Football home matchup against the Indianapolis Colts, led by Gruden's predecessor Dungy. The Buccaneers dominated much of the game, allowing them to take a 35–14 lead near the end of the fourth quarter, but were overcome by a Colts rally that resulted in them losing 38–35. When former Raiders general manager Bruce Allen joined the Buccaneers in 2004, Gruden finally had the general manager–head coach partnership he desired, and while the salary cap continued to plague the team (which spent the least money in the league between 2004 and 2009) their 2004 and 2005 drafts yielded a few impact players, including 2005 Offensive NFL Rookie of the Year Award winner Carnell "Cadillac" Williams. Also, 2005 marked a return to the playoffs, as the Buccaneers posted a surprising 11–5 record, despite the loss of starting quarterback Brian Griese and some controversial coaching decisions, including a two-point conversion in the final seconds to defeat the Washington Redskins, who would later return to Tampa Bay and eliminate the Buccaneers from the Wild Card Round of the playoffs.
