Ron Rivera has been taking a media beatdown for some of his actions last Thursday night, including not speaking to the team at halftime as they were getting hammered by the then-winless Bears, something he himself admitted during the Amazon Prime broadcast.
Well, take that all and add in the Macho Man flying elbow drop from the top rope from Jay Gruden, who can’t believe Rivera did nothing as his team was getting the business.
“You gotta try to light a fire somewhere, make a couple adjustments if you can, get after maybe one of your leaders and try to get them to get the players going,” Gruden said Monday in his weekly segment with Grant & Danny. “Come up with a trick play, something to get the momentum back on your side.”
Jonathan Allen, in his weekly Monday morning segment with the Junkies, confirmed that defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio and both Chase Young and Jeremy Reaves stepped up to speak…but no Ron.
Unacceptable, to the old coach.
“I've never heard of that in any form of football. The head coach has to say something; clap his hands or do something, tell everybody it's gonna be okay and we’re gonna get together,” Gruden said. “We have to talk, do something to rally the troops. You can't just sit there in your room and let them figure it out and argue amongst themselves. Sometimes people get tired of hearing other players talk, they need to hear from their leader, and he's got to say something and try to rally the troops somehow, some way. But to say nothing is very odd to me. I've never heard of that.”
As Grant put it, seems reality is not like the movies, where the leader sits back while the players fight amongst themselves, and then rides in to rally the troops. Well, except for Thursday…
“I never heard of that, but I guess it was Thursday night. I don't know, I never heard of that though,” Gruden laughed. “It didn’t work, and didn’t come across very good either. I'm sure he said something, he probable just wanted to make it clear that he was going to let his leaders take care of it.”
Not the right move?
“It’s a tough situation to be in; when you're down 27-3, there's not a lot of high spirits in that locker room and maybe a lot of finger pointing, and that’s one thing you have make sure of, that there is no finger pointing,” Gruden said. “The only way to get back in the game is everybody gets in it together and does their job and, and does it well.”
That didn’t happen, and we know the result, and Gruden had one last thought when Grant reminded him of who actually spoke at halftime, according to Allen:
“Well that’s interesting,” Gruden said as G&D laughed. “I’ve never heard of it, so I can't help you there.”