Chasing Jon Gruden has become the coaching-search equivalent of chasing a unicorn.
He’s been out of the NFL for eight seasons. He makes a boatload of money at ESPN without the stress of wins and losses. He can roll out of bed and find endorsements and speaking engagements. He gets his football fix grinding tape each week for Monday Night Football, grilling incoming rookies on “Gruden’s QB Camp," etc.
For most teams looking, Gruden may as well not exist.
But if there is one job in America – pro or college – that has the potential to lure this mythical creature out of the wilderness, it might’ve opened this week when the Los Angeles Rams fired Jeff Fisher.
Start with the owner. Stan Kroenke generally stays out of the football operation and has plenty of cash to make Gruden one of, if not the highest-paid coach in the NFL, which is probably what it’d take to get the conversation started. Resources wouldn’t be a problem.
Neither would organizational structure. Gruden likes Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff, who was hired as senior assistant in Tampa Bay while Gruden was the Buccaneers’ coach. My understanding is the Rams are making no decision yet on general manager Les Snead’s fate because they don’t want to limit their coaching search. If their coach of choice wants his own personnel guy, the Rams are open to it.
There’s talent to build around, starting with all-pro Aaron Donald on defense, stud running back Todd Gurley – who’s dying for something better than a “middle-school offense” – and a young quarterback, No. 1 pick Jared Goff, whom Gruden gushed about before last year’s draft. “I would want him if I were still coaching,” Gruden said on a media conference call in April.
The Los Angeles market is a big draw, too. Kroenke’s $2.6 billion football palace is set to open in 2019. Gruden’s first head coaching job was with the Oakland Raiders, and he loves California.
You’d have to think the San Francisco 49ers would be interested in bringing Gruden back to the Bay Area, too, if they decide to pull the plug on the Chip Kelly era. But unless the Indianapolis Colts replace Chuck Pagano – which is possible, based on what owner Jim Irsay told me this week – and give someone a chance to build around Andrew Luck, it’s hard to argue any potential opening in this cycle would come close to rivaling the one in L.A.
Gruden, 53, doesn’t need the NFL. It would have to be the perfect fit. I know he has preoccupations about coaching under all the work restrictions in the 2011 collective-bargaining agreement. I also know the guy is as passionate about football as anyone I’ve ever met. Gruden hasn’t won a playoff game since the Bucs won Super Bowl XXXVII after the 2002 season, and surely some part of him relishes the right opportunity to prove one more time how good of a coach he is.
The Rams should have great options regardless. Other candidates who spurn NFL interest every year, such as Stanford coach David Shaw, could be intrigued. Few coaches would make as much noise as the charismatic Gruden just by showing up, though. And in L.A., after the Great Fisher Faceplant of 2016, it’d be hard to blame the Rams for wanting that.
Demoff already has said the Rams “have to be willing to look under every possible avenue to find the right fit to go lead this football team.”
Why not at least look the one place nobody else can?
