What the Gruden haters dont want to admit or are not smart enough to realize

If you don't believe that Gruden was the difference in us wininng the Super Bowl, just watch America's Game and see Lynch and Sapp tell you straight out...Oh, I forgot...Dalbuc knows more about them as coaches then they do...By the way, I would love to know the coaches who have won Super Bowls with no talent...or just win period...Occasionally you will have a surprise team pop up and have a winning season but then often it is just an average team with a weak schedule and a couple of lucky breaks(us two years ago) or team that had much more talent than we actualize realize (like the first 49ers Super Bowl team or the Patriots first Super Bowl wins)...

I was hitting on this a bit ago...you v=can use **CENSORED** Vermeil as a great example. He is a great coach with a lot of respect

When he went to St Louis his first few seasons were pathetic...and talk about first round busts he drafted Lawrence Phillips...however he put a few pieces together...drafted Torrey Holt, picked up Marshall Faulk, got Trent Green/Kurt Warner

then Guess what...30-40 ppg and a few superbowls later

Vermeil retired Martz took over with all that talent and blew it away

Great coaches are never measured by average talent. Coaching success is measured as great  when you have the players that fit your system in place, have great talent, and win it all.

[ABuccs Fan]

I love Jon Gruden and I'm man enough to admit it!!!

[karen anderson]

Gruden's main problem is he doesn't get great talent. PR even had an article on the many draft busts he's had since he got here.  I'm sure you can find it in  archives. The draft picks after 1 or 2 are just not great.

How many top 5 picks did any of those guys get in recent years? we got 2 since Gruden has been here.

How many have also gave up their first rounders for was it 3 years?? and a few second rounders??

And the first year Gruden was here he was pounding the table for Brian Westbrook at that 3rd round pick....and guess what we got from....

"the Architect of the Bucs greatness"  Richie McKay

Marquise Walker (BTW his superbowl ring is on Ebay)

And who gets the blame for that one??? Not McKay but Gruden

[dodda45]

Vermeil did not have talent...They had the best left tackle in football...the best running back in football(and one of the best ever)...Adding Holt made them the best receiving corps in football at the time...Warner won the league MVP and was a stud for not just that season but following seasons...The "Greatest Show on Turf" had no talent?  Are you kidding me?  

Vermeil and Martz deserve a lot of credit for how well they coached up Warner...He had the talent but was a journeyman before he met them...But the thing is that he had the talent to begin with...Similar to Gannon and Gruden...Gannon was a journeyman and then Gruden helped him become a MVP...He had the talent, he just needed the coaching...Simms hardly falls into this category (at least in my opinion)

[dodda45]

By the way...The Rams did not trade away all of their picks and were in pretty good cap shape as well...

Vermeil did not have talent...They had the best left tackle in football...the best running back in football(and one of the best ever)...Adding Holt made them the best receiving corps in football at the time...Warner won the league MVP and was a stud for not just that season but following seasons...The "Greatest Show on Turf" had no talent?  Are you kidding me? 

Vermeil and Martz deserve a lot of credit for how well they coached up Warner...He had the talent but was a journeyman before he met them...But the thing is that he had the talent to begin with...Similar to Gannon and Gruden...Gannon was a journeyman and then Gruden helped him become a MVP...He had the talent, he just needed the coaching...Simms hardly falls into this category (at least in my opinion)

I think you misunderstood me...

When Vermiel first got to St Louis he had Tony Banks at QB and Issac Bruce at WR with a stink or two of Lawrence Phillips....it wasnt till a few years later when he got Faulk/Holt/Hakim/Prohel/Warner etc...that he turned it around had like 30 ppg and won the superbowls

Martz took it over with that same talent and stuck the joint up

Greatness IMO is not measured on how good you are with an average team...but how good you are with a great team
too many coaches have all the talent in the world but never cash it in (Mike Martz) but it shows the genius of an offensive philosophy (Vermeil/Gruden) when you have a great team and then turn that into wins and a superbowl ring

It isnt a fluke that we were winless vs Philly or below a certain temperature under Dungy but the very next year not only beat Philly but won in the cold (twice) and won our first superbowl

Its a great philosophy mixed with a great group of players

[DanTurksGhost]

You guys are funny.

[dalbuc]

1. You can go back and forth, but to discount the fact that he won a Super Bowl is ridiculous.  Sorry.

2. Discount his playoff record because 3 of his wins came in one run that culminated in a SB championship?   WHAT?!?!?

3. To criticize him because he doesn't win with a poor team is ridiculous.

Alot of what you said is just as ridiculious as what those at the other end of the spectrum have said, though, dal.

No what you think I said is ridiculous but since so many Grudenista appear to have reading disorders let me say this again:

1. I do not discount what he did winning the SB. I give him full credit for that win and always have. I'll fight at the barricades against the "It was Dungy's team" line of crap any day of the week. You know this. The problem is that I CREDIT Gruden with the good he does but I do not excuse the failures he has had. I've said 2005 was a better coaching job than 2002 in terms of results vs. talent. He can coach well but he doesn't seem to stop the crash when it happens and he doesn't deliver the good consistently. While I think 2005 was better than 2002 I'll also say 2003 was WORSE than 2006 or 2005 on the same measure.

2.  The notion that Gruden is a guy who always get it done in the playoffs was UT's point, not that he can win a championship. Different arguement. Gruden has definatly not consistently gotten it done in the playoffs. In fact given his pattern you'd say he could plunge to Schottenheimer-esque levels except he doesn't get to the playoffs often enough to torpedo that one good post-season run.

3. No, the fact that he has "awful" teams is only proven by his awful results. Why is Bruce Gadkowski worse than Kyle Boller or Shaun King? Billick went 10-6 with Boller, Dungy went 10-6 with King. We know that both of those QB's are awful. Again, no one expects, or should, SB's every year nor 14-2. The problem is you should also not expect your great coach to totally crater the season. You are using his results to prove his problems. Simple fact is no other elite coach has, at the "prime" of his career, had the kind of 5-11, 4-12 type seasons Gruden has cranked out 2 of the last 3 years.

What you also miss is that I want to like Gruden. I'm a fan of the WCO as an offense, I believe in that system. He's a guy who deep in his heart is a REAL WCO guy who doesn't want to be Reid and his pass 60% of the time offense. Gruden wants to run the ball and I believe in running the ball. Don't think I don't ant to like this guy, I do. I'd love to see him here for 30 years because that means he's consistently producing winners but the problem is that he's not shown the ability to do that and there's no trend towards growth from him in terms of achieving that end. That is my problem.

[Feel Real Good]

How many top 5 picks did any of those guys get in recent years? we got 2 since Gruden has been here.

How many have also gave up their first rounders for was it 3 years?? and a few second rounders??

And the first year Gruden was here he was pounding the table for Brian Westbrook at that 3rd round pick....and guess what we got from....

"the Architect of the Bucs greatness"  Richie McKay

Marquise Walker (BTW his superbowl ring is on Ebay)

And who gets the blame for that one??? Not McKay but Gruden

The last lost pick from the Gruden trade was a 2nd rounder in 2004. McKay hasn't been here for four drafts now and Gruden has had four 1st round picks with no one to get in his way but himself. He is responsible for a large portion of the roster.

[Simms2Clayton05]

ya i think that the people who dont like gruden are the people who still are in the dungy band wagon. dont get me wrong i think dugy is a very good coach and think that he has done a great job with the COLTS. he is not our coach anymore and i think that we would NOT have won a Superbowl that year if dungy were our coach. I give him alot of credit for how he built our team from rags to riches but Jon Gruden is now on the hot seat because more than a couple of years we were not a good team. We didnt have the picks to help us get better or the money to help us get better. the year after the superbowl i will let fly because we won it the year before and unless you are the new england patriots your not going to win the sb twice in a row these days especcially when u have been giving up first round picks it seemed yearly we didnt have one so that catches up and some unlucky bounces that year. I think the year after that is the year you want to look at gruden in a bad way because of a couple of things but really i dont blame him. We reach the offseason after a bad season which the defending sb champs miss the playoffs and Gruden knows that age is setting in and if we can get some vet guys in here we might be able to make another sb run. He attempted to i guess by signing older experienced players that would try to help out on offense. the problem is none of the guys who we pick up do anything and the worst thing is that we sign them handsomly and they dont do anything productive for us. Thats almost as bad as drafting a big time bust. on top of that we let go key players Sapp and Lynch for cap reasons and it hurts us right away as defense play drops and the offense never really clicks with a couple qbs go in and out. as the only positive in the 05 offseason is that we have a high draft pick and that we have our whole draft this time. We also have a clear cut starter and griese had not too bad of a year and shows he is a true fit for grudens offense something he didnt have with brad johnson. So we get our offense off to a good start in the beginging of last year but wasnt allways great as griese went down for simms to take charge who does a pretty darn good job as a starter but still isnt quite there. Gruden takes us to the playoffs when we were a horrible team the year before and if we didnt choke at home agaisnt washington we might be the super bowl oponent against the steelers. last year i thought was a crock a ***t, our offense was younger than ever we had a rookie at qb and the defense showed it is human and slowed down. Id like to see how any coach would have done with our team last year i bet its not much better than gruden did. the point is that i think that gruden knows what hes doing and i think he is a winner if we can get a few bounces our way early watch out for another playoffs year because i think we got good players in the draft and i think we did well in Free Agency and i hope he is our coach again next year because i think we will be in a better position next offseason to get better with the draft and even more money in free agency to spend wisely. if gruden gets fired i just hope that gruden gets fired because he truly is doing a bad job not because the city / fans wants him fired because he is not tony dungy and we are getting out of an era where he started everything but that era is over and if he is fired because we dont go far in the playoffs i will be upset for gruden and the city of tampa because whoever is next is going to have to fill bigger shoes than JG had to fill with tony dungy because chucky brought us back the lombardi trophy and dungy did not and if the new guy loses right away i cant wait to see wat fans will be saying then.

[Pulling Guard]

Man, dude, how do you expect ANYBODY to read that post? I'm not the grammar police, but I can't even read it.

[Pulling Guard]

Gruden's main problem is he doesn't get great talent. PR even had an article on the many draft busts he's had since he got here.  I'm sure you can find it in  archives. The draft picks after 1 or 2 are just not great.

Hardly any teams get anything out of second day picks.(rnds 4 though 7). The Bucs aren't alone here. You're basically looking for depth here, and to get production out of those draft slots is a bonus.

[dodda45]

Billick had all of his draft picks...had Newsome making his picks (rather than McKay) which gave them a nice corp of strong players in the prime of their career, had Newsome writing contracts (rather than McKay)...Dungy had a defense that was one of the best ever and the players were in the prime of their careers...Billick may have had Boller but he also had Jonathan Ogden on the line!  Gruden had Cosey Coleman, Kenyatta Walker...and last year we had two rookies, a second year player and a undrafted free agent as our best o-lineman...

Also, remember this...One of the constant critcisms of Gruden was that he was carried by his defense...That he was an offensive guru who could not get it done here in Tampa...The offense under Billick has been horrible since he has been there...Last year they finally broke through...and you know why?  They got a quarterback!  Even though they had been spending draft picks on all sorts of offensive talent, it was not until the QB position was solidified that they were able to start producing...

I know stuff like this sounds like small details but the margin of error in football is so small that details matter...Actually, it matters in all sports...

[Simms2Clayton05]

Man, dude, how do you expect ANYBODY to read that post? I'm not the grammar police, but I can't even read it.

im just bored at work and no i cant type for my life lol