In Oakland, Jon Gruden Is Ready to Grind
By S.L. PRICE February 19, 2018
This story appears in the February 26 issue of Sports Illustrated. To subscribe, click here.
Jon Gruden has this idea for a story. It’s not his story—not yet—though it’s clear he’d like it to be. And maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. He did spend plenty of time in the dark, alone, over the last decade, and that would set any man, even one who tries to “stay in two feet of water, don’t get too deep or philosophical,” to thinking. Then there’s the fact that at 54 you hear a lot about guys your age getting hit by cancer or heart attack, here one day and—boom!—gone the next. So, yeah, Gruden formulated this theory about purpose and fraudulence and death. He jotted down some notes and even a title, The Football Gods.
“I thought I could write a cool Broadway play,” he says. “I really do want to write this book. But I’d rather it be a movie.”
The base conceit is that in the end, your passion leads to your heaven. Live for classical music? Die and you’ll be up there conducting the New York Philharmonic. Legendary football coaches like Lombardi and Halas? They arrived, started talking ball and never stopped. And now they monitor the coaches down on earth. Gruden is “convinced” this part is real. All those icons are up there, judging.
“If you’re faking it, the football gods will get you,” he says. “They reward the guys who work hard. That’s why Tom Brady is where he is. If you’re focused and determined and legit, good things will happen. I believe that.”
Now, to Gruden-bashers this idea couldn’t be more hokey, but you can’t overstate the power of context. He is saying this not from the Monday Night Football booth, or while tutoring some wide-eyed QB on ESPN. No, he’s sitting now in his old/new Raiders office in Alameda, 27 days after breaking a nine-year exile in broadcasting to become the highest-paid coach in NFL history. It’s Super Bowl Sunday, but he’s been here since before sunrise, “grinding” and “layin’ bricks,” with no one else in sight.
Jon Gruden is an awful driver. Sure, he can handle a straight shot on an empty highway, with Zeppelin or BTO cranking, on the two-minute early-morning hop from the Hampton Inn to the Raiders’ facility. But given that the team just dropped this gleaming Mercedes S 550 on him four days ago, and that there’s all kinds of new signage and roads and a helluva lot more traffic since he worked here 16 years ago, the 20-minute trip to Ricky’s Sports Theatre and Grill in San Leandro figures to be a bit of an adventure.
First there’s the matter of his side-view mirrors, which stay folded flush no matter how much Gruden shoves and bangs with his left hand, or feels about the car’s instrument panel with his right, all while drifting down 98th Avenue toward I-880 South as the GPS ladyvoice cuts in every 10 seconds to dictate the next turn. “Where am I going here, you think?” he asks more than once. “You think this is right?”
Finally Gruden hits the correct button, and the mirrors unfold like wings. But—what with his utter lack of direction, the cars whizzing angrily past, the rehash of yesterday’s Super Bowl (“I got caught up in it,” he says of the second half, “and it came down to fourth-quarter pass rush”), one missed turn, his describing the morning’s offensive meeting and breaking down two still-delicious plays he called in the 2002 NFC championship game—it’s a wonder we arrive unscathed. “That’s why I have a driver most of the time,” he says.
We sit at a high-top, order burgers and beer. Word has already spread, and over the next hour a steady trickle of fans hustle in. Gruden’s modus operandi is to greet anyone warily edging his way with a hearty “What is going on? What’s your name?” Then up steps Ahmed Fasail, with his two kids, all kitted out in Raiders gear. His nine-year-old daughter hands Gruden a fistful of dandelions and asks, “How come you left the Raiders?”
“I got traded!” Gruden replies.
Ahmed: “I told her, ‘He didn’t leave. They left him.’ ”
“How would you like to come home one day and hear you got traded to Florida?” Gruden asks. “You wouldn’t like that, would ya?”
Ahmed’s eyes widen. “Wow, you got the same voice as on TV!” he says. “The same voice!”
They talk a few more minutes and Gruden insists on buying the family lunch.
Gruden has never been pure rah-rah; he rode Tampa quarterback Chris Simms and tackle Kenyatta Walker mercilessly. (“Some people think I was an a------, and I probably was at times.”) But he has always been open to players, owners, fans—anyone who matches his energy, who needs football as much as he does—and he will talk to anybody, anytime, on the off chance of finding a kindred spark. “Do you like the game plan? The play call?” he used to implore players back in the day. And when they nodded, “just [like] a bobblehead,” it killed him. Oakland quarterback Rich Gannon knew enough to trot off shouting, “I love it, man! Love it! Love!!!”
For the entire article......
