Jay Gruden is running out of the many excuses he shouldn’t have been afforded in the first place.
I’m neither a fan of the franchise in Washington D.C. nor it’s, now, backup Quarterback Robert Griffin, III. I am less a fan of Gruden, though, who is quickly becoming the biggest problem among coaches with legendary last names in the NFL. Let me start by posing a simple question:
What has Jay Gruden done to this point to prove he’s a capable head coach in the NFL?
Normally I would depend on track record to answer that question but I can’t seem to do that in this instance. His background is highlighted by a stint as an offensive assistant for the 2002 Super Bowl Champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A team head coached by (you guessed it) his brother, Jon Gruden.
From 2011 to 2013 he served as the offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals, and while he was gifted with defenses that ranked in the top-10 annually, his offenses were middle of the road at best. The development of Andy Dalton as Quarterback has been panned given Gruden’s inability to put together an offense with any semblance of balance.
So how did Gruden turn his track record, one that has seen him spend more time in the Arena Football League than the NFL, into an NFL head coaching job?
I’m still wondering.
Since he’s arrived in Washington all he’s done is mismanage the run game (a trend from his Cincinnati days), call out the franchise Quarterback (a trend from Cincinnati), and pass blame everywhere but himself. This is a man who is outmatched in the NFC East in every facet of running a football team and if Washington doesn’t figure that out soon they’re going to set themselves back even further.
But I guess that is business as usual for this franchise.
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