Jay Gruden – coming off an eventful weekend for the former Washington Redskins head coach going down memory lane with one of his former quarterbacks – joins The Chris Russell Show to talk about the NFL playoffs and much more from around the league and that litttle Twitter back and forth, too, with Russell and old friend Doc Walker.
Before getting into the jucy stuff, Gruden and Russell talked about the Washington Commanders hiring Adam Peters as the next general manager and if it can all work with Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen and the remnants of their regime gone. But first, Gruden said they have to hire the right head coach to work with before making "the most important pick" in franchise history at No. 2 overall in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Of course, but first, Gruden's and Robert Griffin III's little spat was a topic of conversation that generated a bit of traction, and that "was kinda neat to be trending in a weird kinda way" the former head coach said. And it came from Gruden watching Philadelphia not adjusting to Tampa Bay's blitzing all night.
Not to re-hash 'ancient history,' Gruden said that "the reason I kept Sean McVay on staff is we tried to tie in a lot of what Kyle and Mike [Shanahan] did when Robert had success as a rookie. So we did adjust my style of coaching to a guy that could run, it just didn't work out. Kirk [Cousins] was just a better player, everybody saw it in practice you didn't have to be an expert analysis of football talent to realize that Kirk was a player and he's proven that over his career that he was a better player and that's all. It had nothing to do with dislike for Robert or anything like that. I tried to get Robert... we started him, did the best we could with Robert, but as time went on it just became clear to everybody in the building – not just me, but to Sean, to everybody else – that Kirk was the better player. That's all. It has nothing to do with anything else."
The entire conversation – which touches on the NFL playoffs and CJ Stroud's play – can from The Chris Russell Show can be herd on the audio player above!
