Jay Gruden won four championships in Tampa during his time in the Arena League, and he was an offensive assistant when his brother led the Bucs to their first Super Bowl title 22 years ago…so a little crazy for Jay to watch the one team HE coached in the NFL, the Commanders, come into Raymond James Stadium and beat the Bucs for their first playoff win in 19 years – on the same field they got the last one, no less.
“The stakes are obviously at the all-time high, and that's what you play for; you prepare from the draft through camp and through the season where everything is geared up to get into the playoffs, and it’s a huge opportunity with a lot of pressure and stress in every situation,” Jay told Chris Russell about coaching in the playoffs. “But even though you knew the stakes were different, the lead-up was more intense pressure, once you got into the game, play-calling and all that stuff and playing the game has to be pretty similar to the way you got to that point. You can't all of a sudden say, hey, we're going to play better, or we're gonna coach better; we had to continue to do the things the way we did to get here, and hope your players perform at the best level possible.”
Well, that’s what Jayden Daniels, who Rooster says has ice water in his veins, did on Sunday night, and in a game that was a pressure-cooker the whole way and always close, the rookie made the biggest play of the night by shaking off Calijah Kancey and getting the first down the Commanders needed to run out the clock and get to Zane Gonzalez’s game-winning field goal.
“That was a hell of a play. There's a lot of plays you can point to that were just critical that he made, that put them in position to win the game,” Gruden said. “That was one, and the third-and-six where he completed to Dyami Brown with 4 ½ minutes to go was huge too; it was an unbelievable throw, perfectly thrown, and that kept the drive going. I wrote down three or four plays that were just critical like that, but he just doesn’t flinch; he makes play after play in critical situations, and that's what makes him special. He makes defenses scratch their heads on the sidelines trying to contain him. He’s playing at an all-time high level right now.”
Another of those plays? The FOURTH time Dan Quinn went for it on fourth down and second in the red zone in the span of a dozen plays, which ended with Terry McLaurin scoring a go-ahead touchdown that made it 20-17 in the fourth quarter.
“I can't fault any of Quinn’s decisions that he's made throughout the year. He's been going for it on a consistent basis, so I think you got to hand it to him for doing that, and I think the players and Kliff Kingsbury understand it,” Gruden said. “Kliff and the players are always ready on fourth down, so I think for Washington it was probably the right call, even if for me, or somebody else with another quarterback, a field goal would have been the right call. When you have Jayden and the confidence level that he has in him making plays, I think it's the right call, and your ability to go for it is a little bit easier; your guts grow a little bit, and when you get those plays, it changes the momentum of the game and it changes the scope of the game. There’s a major risk involved in it, and Dan Quinn understands that, but he also understands he has a great quarterback that can execute and perform at critical situations like Jayden does, and when you have that trust level, it's easy to call.”
Take a listen to Gruden’s entire call-in, as he goes deeper on some certain situations from Sunday, spins around Wild Card Weekend with Rooster, and much more!