At a recent golf tournament in Richmond, DeAngelo Hall had a chance to catch up with former Washington head coach Jay Gruden. And their conversation "got pretty heated," Hall says.
Speaking to Brian Mitchell and JP Finlay on 106.7 The Fan, Hall recalled his recent trip to Kinloch Golf Club, where he says Gruden and Michael Vick were in attendance, among others. Finlay mentioned how "the best coaches take advantage of their players and don't worry about their systems," saying they "play to their players' strengths, rather than try to force round pegs into square holes." That jogged Hall's memory about his chat with Gruden.
"I was telling [Eddie Royal] a funny story, because you talk about that Kinloch trip," said Hall. "Mike Vick was down there. Jay Gruden was down there. And me and Jay got pretty heated just talking, talking ball. Him telling me what he sees in different things, and I'm telling him what I see in different things and, you know, kind of some things that I didn't like here versus when he was running the show and things."
Washington was a pretty middle-of-the-road type of team under Gruden, but especially so during the years Hall is referencing. Between 2014 and 2017, Washington had a pair of losing seasons (4-12; 7-9) and a pair of winning seasons (9-7; 8-7-1), including an NFC East championship in 2015.
And according to Hall, it sounds like, during those middling years, Gruden might have been somewhat out of touch with what was going on inside his own locker room.
"It got heated because I'm telling Jay, at the end of the day, like, you are who you are," Hall continued. "The way you were brought up, your experiences in life have shown you how you handle certain situations. The reason I'm different from you, and the reason I think I'm gonna be a dog whatever I do in football, is because I know my experiences have definitely prepared me to sit down and have a conversation with whoever it is about any situation, because I've been in so many different situations."
Related
"I mean, it was just so profound just to hear his side of things, the way he saw things," Hall said, "and then me kind of educating him, like, 'Well look, it was totally not like that. Like, if you'd have came in that locker room, like, this is what they were feeling. They were feeling like nobody did...'"
Hall used the anecdote to emphasize his point that it seems like Ron Rivera is in touch with his locker room, which has allowed him to keep a good handle on things in his first year coaching Washington.
"And so his perspective was totally different on what was really happening," Hall said of Gruden. "It takes the guys in that locker room really running the show. I know we say that a lot, you know the players start to kind of police themselves. But BMitch has been a part of some great football teams. I've been a part of some okay ones, where we had a couple stints where we started figuring it out."
"But when you've got a chance to bottle up some of that greatness," he continued. "And like I said, I haven't been a part of a lot of great teams, but the ones I've been a part of, we as the players, we ran that football team. And I feel like that's the only way it works."
"Because Coach Rivera or any other coach, they're not gonna be with some of these guys when they're just out and about and expected to make the right decisions. Just in anything," he said. "On the football field, that's one extreme. But we're talking about just in life.
"And so sometimes you've gotta have those guys in the locker room that the guys, the other players, the younger guys can talk to. And it doesn't need to be an older guy. You see Chase Young, he's one of those vocal type leaders and I'm sure he's in there policing those guys and making sure things get done the right way, because there's a standard that you have to play with and there's a standard that's expected."
You can catch this portion of BMitch & Finlay's conversation with Hall around the 11-minute mark below.