The New York Giants made a big move yesterday, firing Brian Daboll and naming Mike Kafka as the interim head coach. Now, many are beginning to wonder who the team’s next long-term leader will be. Ans unsurprisingly, some have suggested Jon Gruden as a potential candidate for the job.
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Gruden has been employed at Barstool Sports for the past year. He signed a three-year deal with the media conglomerate, but he has an opt-out clause should he ever accept a head coaching position in the NFL. With the Giants’ position now open, fans and pundits are curious whether he’ll take advantage of that clause.
One of those speculating is Jon’s brother, former head coach Jay Gruden.
“I think he’d be very interested,” Gruden told The Arena. “He loves Jaxson Dart.”
Jon actually has a genuine appreciation for most rookie QBs in the NFL, which makes sense given his popular yearly rookie QB camps. His episode with Dart, however, was by far the most popular from this past year, and he had plenty of good things to say about the young quarterback during the interview, even mentioning how he’d love to coach him.
There are still some concerns about Gruden’s past and his time away from the NFL. After all, he was fired back in 2021 for emails uncovered back in 2018 that contained racist, homophobic, and misogynistic remarks. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers even removed him from their Ring of Honor because of it.
That said, Jay took the time to defend his brother and speak out about the kind of coach Jon truly is.
“If you want a guy to run RPOs and zone reads, he’s not your guy. If you want a guy to come in with the ability to challenge your quarterback every day with personnel groupings, formations, snap counts, motions, a way to develop a quarterback the right way, then yeah, I’d be interested in having Jon come and coach my team,” Jay said.
The former coach added that playing quarterback in the NFL takes years to master. It requires a level of dedication and study that Jon maintains every day, even while away from the game. Just imagine how much knowledge and insight he’d bring to a team if he returned.
By the end of his talk, Jay also pointed out that Jon hasn’t really been away from football at all.
“I know that he’s still heavily involved in football. He’s got two servers at his office, he watches all kinds of film, he’s got cut-ups out the a**,” Jay joked. “A lot of quarterbacks, a lot of players, a lot of coaches go to his office in the offseason and study with him… It’s not like if you hire him, he’s been out of football.”
All in all, it sounds like Jon Gruden would be a good fit in New York. He loves Dart, he still loves the game, and he seems motivated to become a head coach again one day. He wouldn’t have included the opt-out clause in his Barstool contract if he wasn’t.
