The Raiders were getting ready to play the Denver Broncos, and Jon Gruden was deep into his pregame preparation. Gruden was 34 years old, looked closer to 24, and in his first season as head coach.
Bucky Brooks, an NFL Network analyst who played for the Raiders during Gruden’s first season in 1998, described the scene.
“He had headphones on, and he was kind of rocking out to whatever music he was listening to,” Brooks said. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a coach into music like that.’ In my mind it made him more relatable. It made him more like us.”
Gruden remains happily stuck in a musical time warp 20 years later.
“Haven’t changed at all,” the Raiders coach said in his Napa training camp office during a 5 a.m. interview. “I’ve still got ‘Hair of the Dog’ by Nazareth. ‘Shoot to Thrill’ by AC/DC. ‘Wango Tango’ and ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ from Ted Nugent. I listened to Bachman-Turner Overdrive this morning. Got the Eagles in there, a little Rolling Stones.”
FITTINGLY, THE ROCK FAN HAS BECOME THIS YEAR’S ROCK STAR COACH.
One glimpse of Gruden enthusiastically mixing with Raiders fans provides proof his popularity has grown exponentially since being traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the middle of the night by Al Davis after the 2001 season.
Gruden’s return to coaching after nine years in the ESPN “Monday Night Football” broadcast booth is one of the biggest stories of the NFL season. He holds true to many of the principles he believed in when setting the stage for the closest thing to a run of sustained success since the Raiders returned to Oakland in 1995.
Now 55, Gruden is 17 years removed from being named one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People. When Gruden said tongue-in-cheek at the NFL scouting combine that he was looking to bring football back to 1998, some concluded on social media that the man still revered as “Chucky” by Raiders fans was out of touch.
Gruden is alternately annoyed and amused by the perception, depending on the moment. He has spent the past nine years studying football in his office at a Tampa strip mall in addition to visiting virtually every facility in the league and mining nuggets from the top minds in the sport, both college and pro.
While Gruden reportedly received a 10-year, $100 million contract, he already had plenty of money. What he craved was the rush of a final score on game day. He was tired of just talking for a living. Nothing causes him to change the channel faster than the latest political viewpoint, “hot take” or chef proclaiming how to make the perfect meal.
“It’s every show, every channel,” Gruden said. “People talking about politics. People talking about food. I just want to see action.”
Gruden said he doesn’t listen, but he hears the critics loud and clear.
“Negativity bothers me. I just change the subject,” Gruden said. “There’s a lot of people who just love that stuff. A lot of people don’t like reporting the news anymore, they like making the news. A lot of people are experts on the Raiders that have never been here to practice or met any of our players and coaches. I appreciate it. I was in the media. Some of ’em are pretty damn good. People can throw stones all they want.“
Speaking of storylines, Gruden has had it with reliving the good old days with the Raiders. He got that out of his system Jan. 9, the day he was reintroduced as head coach by team owner Mark Davis.
“Everybody keeps asking me about the past,” Gruden said. “You get worn out answering all the nostalgia questions.”
Yet it’s instructive to go back to 1998 and 1999, a pair of 8-8 seasons that changed the culture of an organization that had fallen into disrepair during a 4-12 season under Joe Bugel.
Gruden had already interviewed twice with Al Davis, once as an offensive coordinator candidate in 1996 (he held that position for the Philadelphia Eagles) and again when Bugel was hired in 1997.
WHEN GRUDEN GOT THE JOB, THE RAIDERS WERE A MESS.
“We had nine guys in the offseason program — nine,” Gruden said. “We had a tryout camp, brought in lots of guys. Guys that worked at 7-Eleven. Guys that were from Oakland that wanted to try out.”
Two of those players, safety Louis Riddick (a former NFL personnel executive and now an ESPN analyst) and fullback Jermaine Williams, were signed to the roster.
Tim Brown, the Raiders’ star wide receiver, had never heard of Gruden.
“I thought he was in over his head,” Brown said during a phone interview. “Not with the team so much, as having to deal with the organization and Al Davis. They’re bringing a 34-year-old kid in here to deal with this? No way.”
Brown’s first inclination was to exercise an option to void his contract after the 1998 season and hopefully play for his hometown Dallas Cowboys.
Instead, Brown, along with a handful of other veterans, found themselves drawn to Gruden’s enthusiasm and willingness to implement his own plan with ideas that weren’t always compatible with Davis.
“He promised me one thing — that he was going to do things his way,” Brown said. “I said, ‘Well, then you’re going to get fired.’ And he said, ‘They’re going to fire me anyway, so I might as well do things my way.’ ”
Gruden immediately appealed to veterans to help him remake the culture.
“I remember saying something like, ‘It doesn’t matter if I’m here for 10 days or 10 years,’” Gruden said. “We sought out Greg Biekert, Albert Lewis, Steve Wisniewski, Russell Maryland. Tim Brown. The real leaders. I asked them for their support. We released players that weren’t real happy Raiders. I think it got their attention, it got ’em to buy in.
“Real players want to work. They want structure, some discipline. I tried to sell myself, my staff, my program. I think they saw, slowly but surely, the changes worked.”
Gruden, then and now, is quick to praise players who know their assignments and share his passion. Come to practice unprepared or with a hint of lethargy, and he can be blunt and profane.
“His enthusiasm is infectious, and even though he was young, he had credibility in the ability to make you better, and that translates whether it’s a first-year player such as myself or a multiple Pro Bowler like Eric Allen,” Riddick said. “I never minded the yelling or getting cussed. I felt he was supportive and trying to make me better.”
IT WASN’T ALWAYS SMOOTH. The roster was still thin, and injuries played a major role in a team that started out 6-2 finishing 8-8. Maryland, a defensive tackle who arrived in 1996 after winning two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys, watched with interest.
“It was a little tough for him at first,” Maryland said. “Guys would give him a hard time. Darrell Russell and a couple of D-linemen would say crazy stuff to him just to see if they could get a reaction. But the thing I noticed was he stayed the course. He didn’t care what other people thought. He had a plan, and he knew what he wanted to do. People started to get in line.”
BIEKERT SAID GRUDEN’S PRESENCE MADE PLAYERS LESS COMFORTABLE IN A NECESSARY WAY.
“I remember our first meeting and a little golf outing we had in Alameda,” Biekert said. “We didn’t really know who he was, but you just sensed this was a guy that was really expecting a lot out of all of us and made that clear in no uncertain terms. It was like, ‘OK, we’d better get going or we’re not going to be here.’ It put you on edge, but at the same time, he has this personality that gets you excited about what you’re doing.”
Running back Harvey Williams, who joined the Raiders in 1994, contributed as a runner/receiver during Gruden’s first season. But his lasting legacy is measured in deeper ways.
It was Williams who first noticed that Gruden’s pained facial contortions were similar to the murderous doll in the 1988 movie “Child’s Play.”
“Every time I’d look at him after a bad play in practice, he had his face all scrunched up,” Williams said during the Raiders’ alumni weekend in Napa. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, he looks like that little doll Chucky. I started saying it, and everybody started calling him Chucky. It just blew up.”
Fans began bringing “Chucky” dolls to the Coliseum, the dolls dressed in coaching day attire and complete with a headset.
Gruden’s fondness for veterans was reinforced in 1999, when players such as running backs Zack Crockett and Tyrone Wheatley joined the roster.
“We were trying to prove ourselves, and he was trying to prove himself at the same time,” said Crockett, now a Raiders scout. “He would give guys like myself, a journeyman at the time, an opportunity to reinvent themselves. He’d say, ‘You’re going to start over fresh.’”
In a league that often phases out veteran players, Gruden embraces them. Jerry Rice came on board in 2001 and thrived with Gruden pushing him.
“I think there’s a lack of respect today for veterans, period — in every walk of life,” Gruden said. “I like to show old footage of players. … I think it’s a great way to learn. Why is this guy a Hall of Fame player? Let me tell you why Jerry Rice is in the Hall of Fame. Let me show you why Jerry Rice is in the Hall of Fame. Maybe you can steal some things.”
Gruden’s biggest move during his first Raiders tenure was an unpopular one. After going through three quarterbacks who all were sidelined at various times by groin injuries — Jeff George, Donald Hollas and Wade Wilson — Gruden sold Davis on the idea of making Rich Gannon the starting quarterback.
It took some doing. George was a big-ticket free agent signed in 1997 to replace Jeff Hostetler and passed for 3,917 yards and 29 touchdowns. He had the kind of arm Davis loved. As Gruden was poring over film after getting the job to evaluate his own personnel, Gannon, then with the Kansas City Chiefs, caught his eye.
Gannon completed 15 of 21 passes for 221 yards and a touchdown, and rushed for another score as the Chiefs beat the Raiders 30-0 in December 1997. He was 32 and had never seized the starting position in Washington, Minnesota or Kansas City.
Gannon led the Chiefs on a five-game winning streak to help secure a playoff berth, but they went back to injured starter Elvis Grbac and lost a first-round playoff game. Gannon started 10 games for the Chiefs in 1998, then when his contract expired, he began looking for a new home.
During a free-agent visit the following spring, Gruden and Gannon watched film, then talked football at a Mexican restaurant on the San Leandro marina.
As Gannon recalled, there was an instant bond. The two spoke the same language.
“You can sit down with someone — at least I could, anyway — and in an hour you could get a sense of their aptitude and football IQ,” Gannon said. “Jon was off the charts. He had amazing retention and the ability to process a lot of information. His recall was phenomenal. I knew right away we were going to hit it off.“
The decision to allow a roster bonus to lapse on George and instead sign Gannon wasn’t well-received. But some in the Raiders locker room, who wondered why Gannon wasn’t starting for the Chiefs, were delighted.
“It seemed like every time he was in there, he moved their offense,” Biekert said. “We would sit in meetings when we played the Chiefs and say, ‘Don’t knock their starter out of the lineup because we don’t want Gannon to come in.’ I remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe we really got him.’ ”
Another 8-8 season followed, largely because of place-kicking issues. The Raiders lost those eight games by a total of 34 points and went into the fourth quarter with a chance to win every week.
It began what is the lost statistic in Gruden’s first tenure with the Raiders. In the last 50 regular-season games Gruden coached in Oakland, the Raiders never lost a game by double figures. There were no cosmetic late rallies, either. The Raiders went into the fourth quarter of all those games with a chance to win.
The first two years were a springboard to a 12-4 season and an AFC West title, the first of three in a row, and Gruden felt the foundation was laid in the first two years.
“GUYS WERE WORKING HARD. THEY WERE PLAYING TOGETHER. Buying in to the system,” Gruden said. “There was a lot of progress. I think we were playing pretty damn good football. Had we made some field goals those first couple of years, we might have made the playoffs.”
The end came suddenly after a second-round loss to New England in the infamous “Tuck-Rule” game following the 2001 season. Gruden and agent Bob LaMonte were embroiled in a contract dispute with an owner in Davis whose philosophy was to spend his money on players, not coaches.
Davis opted to trade Gruden to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for two first-round picks, two second-round picks and $8 million.
What happened next pains Raiders fans to this day. The Raiders finally made it back to the Super Bowl, where they were blown out by Gruden’s Buccaneers 48-21 in Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego.
It may have been a storybook finish for Gruden, but there would be no fairytale ending. The Bucs went 45-51 over his last six years, made it to the playoffs twice and lost each time. There were occasional disputes with players, most notably wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson.
Gruden never found his Gannon at Tampa Bay, cycling through the likes of Brad Johnson, Chris Simms, Brian Griese, Bruce Gradkowski and Jeff Garcia. Gruden was fired after the 2008 season.
“I’m proud of what we did there,” Gruden said. “I never once got in my car and went home and said, ‘Man, I didn’t put in a good day’s work.’ I could have had some better relationships with players, but I had some great relationships, too. I don’t have a lot of regrets, other than we didn’t win enough.”
Nine years in the booth followed, and every offseason there were rumors Gruden would return. LaMonte said there wasn’t a single season where major college and NFL teams didn’t reach out.
All the while, Gruden said he was committed to ESPN, even as he was gradually coming around to the idea of coaching.
“I’ve been at the edge of the pool about to jump in a few times,” Gruden said.
Peyton Manning, the former Colts and Broncos quarterback with whom Gruden developed a close friendship, figured a comeback was inevitable.
“I’d see him when he’d do games and I’d say, ‘How you doin’ Jon?,’” Manning said during a visit to Napa. “He’d say, ‘Haven’t lost a game in six years.’ I’d say, ‘But you haven’t won one, either.’ I could tell he always thought about that. When you’re not playing, you don’t get the pain of losing, but you don’t get the exhilaration of winning, either.”
At training camp, Gruden is back into the old grind. He still awakens when it’s dark outside and scripts every practice himself on a computer. His desk is cluttered with papers, and there are reading glasses that weren’t there 20 years ago.
Before practice, Gruden is serious, focused and looks nothing like the rock star who made it his mission to interact with as many Raiders fans as possible during an event he hosted at Ricky’s Sports Theatre and Grill before training camp began.
In Napa, the fans still bring dolls, shout “Chucky,” and Gruden clearly enjoys the adulation, as well as the passion.
“I’m a grunt. I’m a dirty, old grunt. I like to be with the real fans. I like to be with real people,” Gruden said. “I like fans that love football. I love the energy around preseason, the excitement of a new season. I like being around it.”
On this day, Gruden said he got going at 4:30 a.m. — a full hour later than when the very same interviewer met him for a “day at training camp” feature nearly 20 years ago.
“Since I got hired, I haven’t seen the light of day, really,” Gruden said. “It’s about getting this team on track and delivering for Oakland and the Raiders. That’s all I’m trying to do. I love being back in the grind.”
Gruden is asked how he could possibly enjoy that kind of schedule, and he recalled a line by Warren Sapp, a star defensive tackle from his championship Bucs team now in the Pro Football of Fame.
“I’ve been told a lot, ‘You’ve got to be miserable to be happy,’ ” Gruden said. “Warren Sapp and I agreed on that one thing. At the end of a game, he was tired, he was sore … that’s when he thrived. I remember him on the field screaming, ‘I love the misery!’
“I was thinking, ‘So do I. So do I.’ ”
