NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero sat down with Peter Schrager on Good Morning Football to dish out what he’s hearing on the upcoming NFL head coach hiring cycle, and when Pelissero was asked to highlight a dark horse being considered by teams but not often discussed in the media, he suggested someone who has a couple of New Orleans Saints connections.
“Keep an eye on Jon Gruden,” Pelissero began. “We have not seen Gruden in a full-time basis in the NFL since back in 2021 when he resigned after offensive emails were leaked to the media that he had sent while working as an analyst at ESPN. However, he has remained engaged. We saw him on the sideline with the Bucs owners earlier this fall. We saw him working with the Saints back in training camp last year.”
Gruden briefly reunited with Derek Carr at 2023 organized team activities and minicamp practices to help the veteran quarterback pick up Pete Carmichael’s playbook in his first offseason with the Saints, but it didn’t work out very well. Carr’s 228.1 passing yards per game were the third-fewest of his career, and Carmichael was fired after the season. But Pelissero says the Saints liked what they saw enough to consider replacing Carmichael with Gruden.
“My understanding is if he had wanted the Saints offensive coordinator job last year, he could have had it. He ultimately decided he was not going to do that. But I can tell you though, Peter, not to say for sure Jon Gruden will be back, but there have been multiple teams that have been doing extensive homework on Jon Gruden — the situation, him as a coach, him as a person — I would not be surprised at all if in the coming weeks you see Jon Gruden’s name popping up interviewing for a head coaching job,” Pelissero added.
That doesn’t really line up with what was reported at the time. Gruden was widely expected to enter the mix as a candidate for the job, but the Saints never formally interviewed him while investing a lot of resources in a search that ended with Klint Kubiak getting the job. It’s true that Gruden has been around the team as an unpaid consultant, and it was reported back in Jan. 2024 that he “likely would” have joined the team as an assistant, not the offensive coordinator.
But could Gruden be the team’s next head coach? Anything is possible, but that feels like a massive misstep. The Saints need to rebuild their roster, and that’s not something Gruden has done in decades. Lately he’s kept busy with forays into social media content and even if teams have done their homework, none have engaged with him publicly. He has a ton of baggage given his ongoing legal action against the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell, to say nothing of the content of his emails themselves. The Saints would be better served going in a different direction with someone who has a fresher perspective on building an NFL team, and who wouldn’t be facing the kind of questions Gruden has opened himself up to.
[lawrence-auto-related count=5]