Why Gruden Is On The Hot Seat - Part Two Of A Series

Everything you read about the Buccaneers re-iterates that Jon Gruden is in the "hot seat" this season and needs to win a bunch of games in order to save his job. I think there's a lot of truth to that, but it isn't just about the number of games he has won or lost. The players have to take their share of the blame for a good number of those losses; they weren't lost because of anything Gruden did. Much of the reason Gruden may be fired in December has to do with some larger issues that he was brought into address and, for whatever reason, they haven't gotten done.

GRUDEN HAS NOT SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVED OFFENSIVE RESULTS: Back in 2002 when Rich McKay was interviewing candidates for the head coaching position, he was specifically instructed by the Glazers to find an offensive-minded coach. They were so serious about it that they rejected McKay's recommended coach, Marvin Lewis, because his specialty was defense. The Glazers finally told McKay he was fucking the whole thing up (they may not have used that exact language) and went and traded for Jon Gruden on their own. Gruden had a reputation as an offensive genius and was brought in specifically to add some teeth to a Buccaneer offense that had been ineffective, to put it kindly, for many years.

So, how did all that work out? During Tony Dungy's tenure, the team scored an average of 18.4 points and allowed an average of 17.1 points per game. Gruden's results are 18.8 points for and 17.2 points against. Gruden's teams have scored less than half a point more per game than Dungy's teams. Considering how completely inept the offenses looked under Mike Shula, Les Steckel and especially Clyde Christensen, that sure doesn't seem like much of an improvement. You'd like to think that Gruden's complicated offensive schemes and his complete devotion to the game would net at least an extra field goal, right?

It occurred to me that maybe when you start taking averages over many years that differences might always come down to fractions of a point and maybe Gruden's results were better than I thought. I tried to think of another time when a defensive coach was fired and replaced by an offensive coach. I picked Ray Rhodes and Andy Reid of the Eagles because it was the first one I thought of. Rhodes's teams averaged 18.3 points for and 22.0 points against per game. Reid's teams (through his first five seasons since that's as many as Gruden has with the Bucs) averaged 21.7 points for and 16.7 points against. Are you kidding me?!? Not only did he get that extra field goal per game on offense, he actually allowed almost one less touchdown per game on defense. And this was Reid's first head coaching job. Gruden already had experience as a head coach when he arrived in Tampa.

I realize there are many, many other factors that figure into this and the head coach is not responsible for all of them. But the fact is that the offensive guru's production isn't any better than his defensive predecessor's and his musical-chair offensive coordinators. And it can obviously be done as Andy Reid proved in Philadelphia. So if you're looking for something measurable and tangible why Gruden may be out after this season, this seems like the mostly likely reason.