Former Washington head coach Jay Gruden weighed in on a number of Commanders current events as well as some of his regrets when coaching the team.
Speaking with Grant Paulsen on 106.7 The Fan, Gruden — like all of us — obviously doesn't know the specifics of what led to Sam Mills III being fired as defensive line coach by the Commanders on Tuesday, but was able to lend his wisdom about the internal workings of an NFL team.
"No, no. Never heard of that," Gruden said when asked if he'd ever heard of a coach getting fired so close to the start of a season. "It doesn't happen very often. After training camp, a couple things you want: you want cohesion; you don't want controversy. And that's one thing that you try to avoid as a coach, but sometimes you have to make a bold move like that to create more cohesion, maybe."
"Maybe there was some people ruffling some feathers in meetings or disrupting the defensive meetings and on-field activities," he said. "Who knows what happened there? Just very odd for it to happen this time of year, because they had the whole offseason to do it after last year and they knew what kind of coach he was. I've heard he's doing pretty good. I know Jonathan liked him. It's unfortunate."
Gruden was asked how it's possible that you would want to keep a guy at the start of the offseason only to change your mind a few days before the preseason opener.
"That's the odd thing about it," he said. "Obviously he's very familiar with Coach Rivera. Something had to happen. I don't know. We can speculate all we want to but obviously something behind the scenes happened. Either he and Jack Del Rio didn't get along or maybe some of the defensive linemen didn't get along. Who knows what happened there? But obviously a move was made for a reason. Nobody knows what that reason is, but they had a lot of time to understand what type of coach he was, what type of person he was before today. That's for sure."
Gruden lamented the challenges of hiring and keeping good assistant coaches, which can be daunting because of contractual reasons, availability and other reasons, he says, while adding, "We had some that I'd like to have shaken loose a little bit sooner than I did."
Asked if he made all the coaching hires in Washington, Gruden said, "I hired the majority of them. There was a couple that I was forced to hire. For the most part, I was happy with our assistants. Obviously offensively we had some pretty good ones: Sean McVay, [Kevin] O'Connell — I mean those were very good. We've had Dave Ragone, who went up. We had a lot of guys that had gone up to higher levels and obviously done very, very well."
"Defensively, unfortunately we didn't really get it done," he said. "I liked Joe Barry. We let Joe Barry go. I liked Coach Jim Haslett. We had to let him go. Unfortunately for those guys, it was more probably personnel related than coach related. We just tried to make some changes and finally get the right people that fit the scheme. Unfortunately, that really never happened for us."
When dissecting the strategy behind who to play in preseason games, Gruden said there were some guys he knew what he'd be getting from and it wasn't worth risking injury, notably Trent Williams, Brandon Scherff and a rookie named Terry McLaurin. He does have some regrets, though.
"Obviously Terry McLaurin, even as a rookie I didn't even put him out there," he said. "I didn't want him to be seen or pull a hamstring or anything crazy. Jordan Reed, I didn't want him to play. I played him one too many series against the Falcons and he got hit in the head. I regret that."
Reed was a gifted tight end who had a notable long history of concussions, and the final blow to the head he suffered — delivered by Falcons safety Keanu Neal — kept him out for the entire 2019 season. Concussions ultimately ended his career prematurely.
"I played Derrius Guice seven plays in his first preseason game and he blew his knee out," Gruden continued. "So those are regrets that I have about the preseason. But you do have to have some camaraderie. The reason I played Jordan Reed is because we had a new quarterback. Case Keenum was new and he wanted to get a couple catches with Case."
Gruden joked around about the Commanders nickname and fight song, as well as Washington's decision to turn down participating in HBO's "Hard Knocks." With regard to Hard Knocks, he told Paulsen, "That wasn't my call. I had bosses ahead of me that made those calls. Bruce Allen, those guys made those [calls]."
"I didn't make any decisions around here," Gruden said. "I just sat there, called plays."
