Missed the edit window.
I’m not saying he’s not good, I’m just saying he wasn’t worth the king’s ransom we gave Oakland for him- two first-round picks, two second-round picks, and $8 million in cash; we could have gotten an equally successful guy for “free”- like John Fox, who the Panthers signed the same offseason. Or, hell, maybe Tony “10 straight playoff seasons” Dungy, who we already had under contract.
Gruden has been extremely disappointing since that first year. And the Bucs are boring as hell.
You miss my point.
The Bucs were coached by a man who was perceived to be inable to coach them into the Super Bowl. The owner wanted a Super Bowl more than anything.
It doesn’t matter that Gruden was coaching a team built by Dungy. The point is, he came in and did something with that team that Dungy had been unable to do. Whether or not Dungy could have accomplished the same thing that year will never be known.
Point is, yes, it was expensive. Yes, I’m sure the owner thought he’d get more than just one appearance in the SB out of Gruden. Maybe he will. But he paid what he paid because he knew one thing for certain: that Gruden would get his team to the Super Bowl once. Which he did.
Was it worth it? Well, ask yourself this: what if you had never made the Super Bowl? Would you be as happy?
We were even more boring under Dungy. At least Gruden has all those bizarre bunch formations and lots of pre-snap motion and stuff. Our offense is actually more entertaining to watch before the snap than after it.
Sadly Gruden gets alot of credit for what Dungy created. I think if Dungy had one more year there they would have won the superbowl anyway.
See, the funny thing is that Gruden had pretty much the same issue in Oakland that Dungy did in Tampa; he took the Raiders to the playoffs for three straight years, and the team promptly lost in the playoffs for three straight years.
Given how dominant our defense was in 2002/3, I’m absolutely certain that Dungy would have won the Super Bowl too. Sure, the margin of victory in the Super Bowl itself might have been a lot smaller, but the result would be the same.
Personally- and I think I’m in a tiny minority in holding this viewpoint, at least in America- I’d rather have a team that was successful but not ultimately successful every year and didn’t win the big one than a team that combined mediocrity with the occasional flashes of brilliance.
My paragons of virtue in the NFL - other than the teams that win the Super Bowl three years out of five, or whatever- are the Marv Levy Bills and the Andy Reid Eagles. IMHO, it’s much harder to be really, really good every year than it is to be extremely good for one year- and in the NFL playoffs, a lot comes down to luck and/or whether you don’t do something silly like firing your coach after a playoff loss.
It should be noted that the team Gruden had built in Oakland did pretty well…
There are some rumors floating around that if Mangini is the next Browns coach, Romeo Crennel may stay on as his defensive coordinator. There were rumors years ago he’d pick him up as the Jets DC if we fired him… and Romeo apparently hasn’t cleaned out his personal items from the team facilities.
So, two questions:
Has a head coach ever stepped down from a HC position and immediately took up a lesser position with the same team?
Would any of you be willing to shoot me in the face?
Wow, that type of move by the Browns would be almost as underwhelming as the Bears bringing in Marinelli. Mediocrity…woo!
I think the Bucs fans need to stop thinking of Dungy as the one that got away. He was never a great Sunday coach and Gruden, for his faults, is a very good Sunday coach. Gruden’s issue is in talent evaluation and player personnel moves. The Bucs have had average talent for a long time and the team has consistently overachieved. That’s fixable if the Glazers are willing to do it.
Dungy, on the other hand, was every bit the underachiever in Indianapolis that he was in Tampa prior to beating the Bears in the Super Bowl, a game in which the Colts would have lost had anyone other than Grossman been involved. To this day, we have no idea how good of a Sunday coach Dungy is because he essentially defers those duties to Peyton Manning and Tom Moore. I don’t think the Bucs would have won without Gruden in 2002, that defense was no better that year than in the previous ones. It was slightly more effective because they were getting more out of their offense and weren’t put in as many untenable positions as the Dungy offenses were, and Gruden coached the game marginally less conservatively which meant fewer times where Dungy put the weight of the world on his defense.
Dungy will go down as a great coach, but aside from having Peyton Manning what has he done as a coach? The Bucs defense was great under him, and it was great after him. That was all Monty Kiffin. The Colts have had excellent talent, which is because of Bill Polian, the guy who build the Marv Levy Bills and directed the early success of the expansion Panthers. Is Dungy really getting credit there? What Dungy does is stay out of the way, which is a notable skill, and he manages personalities and egos, another notable skill. However, none of those things indicate that he’d have led the Bucs to any better fortunes than they achieved under Gruden. Gruden’s creativeness and willingness to take a risk probably meant more wins for Bucs talent that got gradually older and worse.
Also, don’t forget that Gruden’s recent mediocrity is largely a result of a talent poor team. Largely due to the lost draft picks when acquiring him and the poor management of Rich McKay. It’s only been 3 seasons since Bruce Allen came aboard and that the Bucs talent pool will take time to rebuild and develop, the last 2 seasons results seem to indicate that that’s the case.
I’d go so far as to state that Gruden has done a marginally better job than Dungy since the change when you consider the talent at their disposal, the relative strength of the divisions, and the executives in those respective cities.
RNATB, I totally agree with your sentiments regarding coaches and consistency. I’ve said for some time that it’s better to be in the playoffs regularly, even if you don’t get to the Super Bowl/World Series/NBA Championship/Stanley Cup/whatever have you, than it is to be successful once or twice, and out of the playoffs regularly as well. To me, a team like the Florida Marlins exemplifies everything BAD about how to approach things. Give me regular success, and I’ll be quite happy, even if I would love to see the final deal sealed some year.
So please understand I’m not saying what Tampa’s ownership did was right, not at all. But I think you had best give credit where it is due: Jon Gruden helped put together a team in Oakland that made the Super Bowl the year he left, and he coached a team that perennially failed to make the Super Bowl into that game the year he arrived. SOMEwhere in there, there was a Gruden-caused result. 
Wow, sour grapes much? The rest of your post was pretty thoughtful and I tend to somewhat agree, but the Bears that year simply weren’t that good of a team. Not just because of Sexy Rexy, although I agree that he is not a very good NFL QB.
It’s a post for another thread, but Grossman threw 2 interceptions and fumbled 2 snaps. One INT went for a TD in the 4th quarter and was the final score of the game. Grossman managed a dismal 165 yards passing and killed numerous drives, especially in the 2nd half. They were a outstanding defense and probably the best special teams team ever, they won 13 games. It cannot be said that they weren’t a very good team, they were an excellent team with a dismal QB. With a competent QB I contend that they absolutely would have won that game in those conditions, it’s not sour grapes, I’m not even remotely bitter since I had low expectations knowing our QB situation.
That “no better” defense was #1 in yards allowed (by 40 yards per game over the Panthers, who finished #2!), and #1 in scoring defense (by 3 PPG over the Iggles).
No other team has been even close to that kind of defensive dominance since 1985, other than the Super Bowl Ravens team and maybe this year’s Steelers.
And they finished 6th and 9th in total defense in 2001 and 2000, respectively- giving up 50 and 60 yards per game more than in 2002.
Oh, sure- I’m happy with the team’s general performance under Gruden. I really don’t believe he’s responsible for that much of it, though. By his own admission, he involvement in the defense is limited to input on draft picks and free agent signings, and disciplinary issues. He’s an offensive guy- more of an offensive coordinator who happens to have the last word than a true head coach- and the offense simply hasn’t been very good under him. Anyway, we went from being a perennial playoff team that couldn’t make it to the Super Bowl to being an occasional team that appears to have zero chance of making another Super Bowl. If we’d stuck with Dungy, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’d have won a Super Bowl eventually.
We’ve finished 24th, 10th, 22nd, 23rd, 29th, 18th and 14th in total offense in the Gruden era. This despite spending first-round picks on offense in 2001, 2004, 2005 and 2006. We didn’t have first-round picks in '02 and '03, of course. We’ll probably also be spending our first-rounder on a running back again this year; Cadillac is probably out for all of '09 after tearing his left patella tendon again, Earnest Graham is coming off a broken ankle, and Warrick Dunn is pushing 35ish.
Gruden’s a bit like Brian Billick- you can’t deny that he deserves some credit when the team wins, but you certainly have to assign him all the blame when we lose.
Yes, and a big chunk of that 50 and 60 yards per game was probably due to the fact that Gruden decided to pound the rock with Alstott and Dunn and that Johnson’s efficient passing game dramatically shifted the time of possession and field position in the 2002’s teams’ favor. The Shaun King era under Dungy required them to be on the field more and Dungy favors the maddening bend but don’t break style Tampa 2 that Kiffin largely abandoned in the last 7 or 8 years.
Actually, it probably wasn’t. Warrick Dunn left for Atlanta prior to the 2002 season, so it would have been rather difficult for Gruden to pound the rock with him; Alstott and Dunn’s replacement, Michael Pittman, combined for fewer than 300 carries.
Gruden has decided to pound the rock exactly once in the last 7 years- in Week 1 of the 2005 regular season, an experiment that ended in Week 4 when Cadillac Williams got hurt.
There was no Shaun King “era”; he was the starter for one full season (2000), and started 5 games the previous year. Brad Johnson was signed in 2001, and played his first season in Tampa under Dungy.
Dungy doesn’t favor a “bend but don’t break style”; Indianapolis fields that defense because it’s much, much cheaper to sign undersized players with the speed to play the Tampa 2 than it is to sign “prototypical” ones. Indy doesn’t have cap space for defensive free agents- or even to keep its own- because they have so much money tied up on offense.
Um, yeah he does. It’s what the Bucs did when he was there, it’s what the Colts do now. Hell, it’s what he played in at Pittsburgh. It’s his freaking trademark. “Bend but don’t break” is a pejorative, but it does reflect the basic tenets of the defense: minimal blitzing, sound zone coverage, run to the ball. The emphasis is on reaction to the offense rather than proactively trying to attack the offense.
Meh? In 2001, under Dungy, Alstott and Dunn combined for 323 carries and another 103 receptions. In 2002, under Gruden, Alstott and Pittman (oops) combined for 350 carries and 94 receptions. Not the difference I remembered and what was perceived at the time in the media, but I’m not sure where you got your “less than 300” number. Still, I see that the defense seemed to improve on it’s own accord, since the players and defensive coaches and actions of the offenses essentially remained the same, I really wonder why.
I was trying to be a wise ass with the “pound the rock” line but the point is that Gruden’s West Coast philosophy favors ball control, time of possession and efficiency. All things that help a defense indirectly.
It’s chicken and the egg. Dungy uses it because it’s cheaper, and he favors it because it’s cheaper. That’s simply the way he’s always coached and it’s the way his teams have always been fielded. If you want to contend that he plays that way out of necessity against his wishes, we’ll that is pretty meaningless if he actually always plays the way he hates. That becomes what he “favors”. Tampa did become more aggressive after he left and the stats reflected that. Dungy’s hallmark throughout his coaching tree is a soft version of the Tampa 2 with very little blitzing and pressure applied from the front 4.
I was a Schottenheimer basher years ago but I’ve been warming up to the idea. He did a radio interview yesterday where he talked about how the Browns were the best opportunity for a new coach and mentioned how he wanted to coach again… and yet the organization isn’t even giving him an interview.
He’s pretty old so he wouldn’t be around for long, but he’d get things turned around fast. We could have a solid 3 years of decent football (he’s had 2 losing seasons out of 21) and groom a successor. His cowardice in the playoffs is the thing I hate most about NFL coaches - but I think the way he coached his last (14-2) year was noticibly different from the past, so I’m starting to think he may have learned his lesson. He might be willing to go all out to land a superbowl to secure his legacy. And it could be in the town where he started it.
Seems like a good match. If he could be pressured into not having any GM control and not resorting to nepotism (although his son and brother seem to have their own NFL careers), I don’t see why it isn’t worth a shot. I’d prefer it massively to some retarded Mangini/Crennel combo.
I read Alstott’s number of carries as 91 instead of 146.
Number of carries aside, the running game has unquestionably been less effective under Gruden. For the most part, that’s because he signed Pittman, whose “run to the line of scrimmage and fall down” technique just never caught on for some reason.
He doesn’t “always” play the way he hates; in Tampa, he had cap room and draft picks to build his defense the way he wanted it. In Indy, he has the draft picks, but not the cap room.
Kiffin is not any more aggressive than Dungy; this year, we’ve blitzed much more out of necessity, but in the past, the defense didn’t blitz under Dungy and didn’t blitz under Gruden/Kiffin either.
The draft is in March and the Lions don’t even have a coaching staff in place yet. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. The coach has to have input ,yet we do not even have one.