Ex-Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden will be making another appearance at the New Orleans Saints practice facility on Friday, as first reported by Nola.com’s Jeff Duncan and confirmed by NewOrleans.Football’s Mike Triplett. Gruden was invited to return to the Ochsner Sports Performance Center and observe the Saints’ Aug. 4 training camp practice while sharing input on their new quarterback Derek Carr.
Gruden previously visited the Saints to offer feedback on coaching up Carr during minicamp practices, but he’s been out of the NFL since resigning due to the backlash from wildly inappropriate comments directed at his peers, coworkers, superiors, rivals, and other people around the league.
Saints head coach Dennis Allen downplayed Gruden’s involvement earlier this offseason, pointing to the success Carr found in his system and how it could help the quarterback settle in with his new team. Carr did post career-highs in completion percentage, passing yards, quarterback rating, and other advanced metrics like adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A) under Gruden’s tutelage, and the Saints are hoping to achieve similar results.
So from a purely football-focused perspective (as Allen is using), it makes sense to have Gruden watch a couple of practices and compare notes with the coaching staff. It’s not like the team is putting him on payroll and giving him an email address on their private server.
Still, the optics are obviously bad. Bringing in someone who has been blacklisted by the league due to his racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and otherwise bigoted remarks has upset a vocal portion of the fanbase while drawing criticism from national observers. It says something unpleasant about the Saints coaching staff that they would feel a need to seek Gruden out in the first place. But if he’s able to teach them some things about Carr that leads to points being scored and a return to the postseason, few people will remember this even happened, and that’s what Allen is banking on.
