Date: January 8th, 2018 2:36 PM
Author: fragrant kitty cat center
After winning a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay in January 2003, Jon Gruden’s win/loss record began to slowly trend down — finishing 45-51 in his last six years with Buccaneers— until he was ultimately fired. From there, he embarked on a sabbatical that very few coaches have ever had the opportunity to do. He leveraged his job as an ESPN broadcaster to learn from NFL and college coaches to build his playbook and improve his practices to prepare for his eventual return.
Mark Schlereth, who worked with Gruden at ESPN, said: ”He’s got, I mean, literally everything an NFL team has, as far as film and everything else.”
Gruden has had unprecedented access to film, install tapes, playbooks, and coaches. Schlereth also added that Gruden still gets up at 3:30 in the morning to get to his football office in Tampa Bay to watch film and do research. He hasn’t been out of the game, he’s just been in the lab cooking.
Gruden recently proclaimed: “I’m excited with where I am studying the game.” Finally, he’s ready to put his research project into practice after nine years of learning. Seeing how Gruden has evolved as a coach and how he’s going to implement everything that he’s learned is part of the intrigue in seeing him come back.
How will his Frankenstein offense look? Derek Carr and the Raiders offense will be the vessel for his experiment. Gruden was first hired into the NFL as a special assistant to West Coast godfather Mike Holmgren. Though Gruden may deny it, he's a West Coast guy at heart.
“Do you know how many times we use three tight ends?” Gruden once said. “If that's West Coast, I'm Jimmy Carter.”
Though his offense slowly evolved in Oakland and Tampa Bay, the core West Coast concepts and principles were still prominent in his offense. Everything is timing-based and the drops are synced with the routes and the progression of the play. The offense stresses balance not only between run and pass but also play action and the screen game. Pretty much exactly what the Raiders lacked last season.
https://theathletic.com/205084/2018/01/08/what-to-expect-from-grudens-version-of-the-modern-west-coast-offense/
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3850494&forum_id=2#35110266)