Do You Love Football?! (18 page)

The Raiders had returned to Oakland from Los Angeles in 1995, but they flew me to LA, where I sat down with Mike and Joe, who told me he was going to remain the coordinator. "Well, if you're the coordinator, then what am I here to be?"I asked.

"You're going to be the quarterbacks coach and you're going to call the passes while I call the runs," Joe said. "We'll work together and we'll put together an offense."

I had a lot of reservations about an arrangement like that because Joe was a smart coach who had his own ideas of what to do on offense. The last thing I wanted to do was go out to California and ruffle anyone's feathers.

The next morning Bruce Allen and I flew from LA to Oakland, where we would visit Al Davis's house. Most of the conversation was about offense. He wanted to know what plays I liked in the red zone, what I would call on fourth-and-goal from the three-yard line. He wanted me to draw up some patterns, to tell him what kinds of protections I would use against zone blitzes. He talked a lot about his offensive philosophy, which emphasized attacking opponents with a vertical passing game and differed greatly from the "West Coast" approach I was more comfortable with.

Still, I was totally in awe to meet Al and talk about football with him. It was unbelievable. Although I didn't feel good about taking the job because of the possible conflict I thought there might be with Joe Bugel, I appreciated the shot to interview for it.

I can't begin to describe how bad a stadium the Vet was. You had all sorts of creatures crawling around the place at all hours of the day and night. Most of the time you hoped they would never get too close for you to find out what they were, but even if you couldn't see them, you could hear them. You also could smell them, along with every other foul odor that just collected in the place through the years.

Each night the coaches would have a catered dinner delivered while we were working, which is pretty much standard procedure around the league. Thursday night in Philly would always be a little more special because that was when we got chicken wings and barbecued ribs from Outback Steakhouse.

Thursday night also was when the offensive coaches would watch tape of the opponents' red-zone defense. We'd be staring at those red-zone plays and thinking about that Outback delivery showing up at any minute.

You knew exactly when it arrived because it was the only pleasant smell breaking through the normal stink. You could hear the bags being ripped open as the serving area was being set up, and all you could think about was having one of those wings. Finally we just would drop everything and attack the food. When we finished we left our plates, piled with wing and rib bones, on the table for the maintenance people to take care of when they came in early the next morning. Now if you showed up at 3:30 or 4 A.M., as I did, you were usually there before the maintenance crew. That meant as soon as you turned on the lights four or five huge rats would start scurrying across the table where they had been feasting on all of those bones.

We'd be sitting in a quarterback meeting, watching film, and all of a sudden an exterminator would just walk in carrying a big metal can with a hose attached to it. He wouldn't say anything; he'd just start spraying all over the room. Rodney Peete would turn to me and ask, "What's he doing? Should we be breathing that stuff? Is it safe?" I didn't know what to tell him, but if it did anything to keep the rats away I was all for it. The offices had drop ceilings, which were made of thin asbestos tiles that sat on metal frames. If a tile cracked, someone would just pop it out and replace it. Whenever it was quiet, early in the morning or late at night, you could hear things running back and forth inside the ceiling. Every once in a while you would look up at one of those white tiles and see a big, brown stain. You'd say to yourself, What is that, man? How did that get on my ceiling? I don't remember throwing coffee up there.

Maybe it was dirty water leaking from some pipe. Then the more you looked at it, the more you could see that it was a pee stain-that something on the other side of those tiles was peeing on your ceiling.

We had a veteran running backs coach named Dick Jamieson, who was in his late fifties at the time. One day he opened the door to his office at about 5:45 A.M. I was in my office studying tape, and all of a sudden I heard Dick let out this loud scream: "Ahhhhh!" I thought maybe he had had a heart attack or something so I ran over to see what was wrong. It turned out that as soon as Dick opened his door a monster-sized cat came running out. We looked up at his ceiling, and sure enough, there was a big hole in one of those pee-soaked panels where the cat had come crashing through.

All kinds of crazy things happened at the Vet. I remember another morning sitting in my office when the security guy came down and said, "You need to come upstairs right now! Right now! You've got some bandits going through your car!" When I got up there I found that someone had broken into my car and taken whatever change I had for the bridge toll. That place was amazing. But sick as this sounds, I loved it. I loved coaching in Philadelphia. It was such a cool city, old school, hard-core. I especially loved the fans because you not only had fathers and sons who went to the games, but grandfathers, too. I had never seen anything like it.

You knew right away you were going to be judged there. You were going to be accountable for your performance. A good performance, and you might get slapped on the back. You might have somebody slide you a cold one down at the bar. But on bad days? You were going to hear about it from everyone everywhere.

One time I was down in the south end zone of the Vet watching pregame warm-ups, and from the stands behind me I heard, "Hey, Gruden! You are a bleeping idiot!" Our players were laughing and highfiving each other. "Hey, Gruden! You are a bleeping idiot!" This guy's voice was loud and clear, and the players were loving it. They were laughing so hard they could barely stay on their feet to go through the drills. You try to ignore it but you can't. At some point you've got to turn around and see who it is. I finally turned around and it was some guy wearing one of those green construction hard hats with the Eagles logo on it.

Another time, when I was taking my wife out to dinner at a nice restaurant a waiter came up and said, "The gentleman over there would like to send you this drink."

"Thank you," I said.

He handed me a beer and then he gave me a napkin. On the napkin was a note, "Have two more of these, hit the road and don't come back." Gee, thanks.

Then you had all the Philadelphia writers, like Bill Lyon and Bill Conlin, who were going to have something to say about you. So were the famous Howard Eskin and the other talk-show hosts and callers on 610 WIP Radio. You couldn't escape it. You were going to be scrutinized. And I loved it.

It was a skin-thickening process, though. Those three years probably quadrupled my mental toughness. That first year was rough. There were days when I felt like the dumbest person on the planet, when I was ready to drive my car into a tree, when I felt like I was losing my mind. As we had more success and as I became more confident in what I was doing and more comfortable in the job, I was able to handle it a lot better. I learned how to get over it. It was a hell of a trait I acquired that would be very helpful throughout the rest of my career.

For whatever reason, Ricky Watters never really seemed to warm up to me. We had another back at that time named Charlie Garner. I called him "IO," instant offense. We tried like hell to get Ricky and Charlie in the game together, but whenever Charlie was carrying the ball and Ricky wasn't, there would be friction because Ricky would be pissed.

Ricky came from San Francisco, the Super Bowl champions, to Philadelphia to become THE guy. And he was. He carried the ball and caught the ball for more combined yardage with the Eagles than he had anywhere else in his career. You're talking about one of the game's fierce competitors, a player who is convinced that "If you give me the ball, throw me the ball, I'll win the game for you. And if you don't give me the ball and throw me the ball enough, you're an idiot."

To a degree he was right. At the same time there were other players whom we needed to use. We were playing Buffalo in 1996, and there was a series where we used a personnel grouping called "Rocket," which allowed us to get Garner and Watters on the field at the same time. We took the fullback out, moved Ricky to fullback and put Garner in the game. It ended up being a pretty good series for Garner; we had about three or four consecutive plays of eight or nine or more yards. While Garner carried the ball Ricky was in motion or he was blocking, but he wasn't carrying the ball. It really pissed Ricky off. From the field he was making all these angry gestures up to the press box. Everybody knew whom he was yelling at.

We weren't the 49ers when Ricky came to us. We were the Philadelphia Eagles, with an offense coached by a couple of guys still finding their way. We didn't have a Bobb McKittrick. We didn't have a staff that had been together for seven years.

We didn't have Rice and Taylor. We didn't have Brent Jones at tight end. We didn't have seven, eight, nine years of continuity in the same system. We were teaching it from scratch. Maybe Ricky was ready for more, more, more, but maybe we weren't.

There were times after games when I'd go in there shaking guys' hands and Ricky made a point to not even be near me when I was offering congratulations or whatever. It was tough.

Of course Ray wanted to make sure that Ricky was the focal point while at the same time getting other players into the mix. But there was just no way to do that without Ricky getting all bent out of shape. It was an everyday deal.

Still, what a horse Ricky was. As much as maybe he didn't like me and maybe we didn't get along, he was a bitch of a football player and did he deliver for us. Had it not been for the way Ricky performed I don't think any of us from that coaching staff would have had the opportunity to go on to do some of the things we were able to do.

Five weeks into my second season, in the second quarter of a Monday night game against Dallas, we lost Rodney for the season with a torn patellar tendon. Ty Detmer, who had come to us that year after spending four seasons as a backup in Green Bay, took over. Ty had never thrown a pass in the NFL, but we were still rolling on offense. In the second half Ty got drilled by Darren Woodson and he was staggered. He was out on his feet and the trainer was ready to have him sit out the rest of the game. I was against that because the only quarterback left was a rookie, Bobby Hoying, so I yelled at Gerald Carr on the headset, "He's all right! He's all right!"

The doctor came over to take a look at Ty on the sideline. To check Ty's mental capacity the trainer wanted Gerald to ask him some football questions. Gerald started to ask what the formation was on Brown Right A Right, which I knew, in his groggy state, Ty would have a hard time answering because it was one of our more complicated plays.

"No!" I told Gerald on the headset. "Ask him what the formation is on 22 Hank."

That was more generic and would give Ty a better chance to get it right. Gerald asked it and Ty, while slurring his speech a little, knew the answer: "Red right."

"What's the formation on 23 Z In?" Gerald asked.

"Red left," Ty said, still slurring his words. "See, he's fine," I said. "He's okay. Let him play."

Ty went back in and lasted about fifteen or twenty plays before he had to come out again. We gave it our best shot, but Hoying had to finish the game. He threw an interception on a Hail Mary pass on the last play and we lost 23-19.

Ty did come back to lead us to four straight wins. He played well enough for us to lead the NFC in offense and finish 10-6 for the second year in a row. We ended up going to the playoffs, facing the 49ers at 3Com Park in the wild-card round. That game was frustrating because we got the ball in the red zone three times in the first half on three great drives and got no points. It was pouring rain; the winds were gusting up to fifty miles an hour. Ty ended up leaving with a hamstring injury on our first possession of the second half, and Mark Rypien had to finish the game. We lost 14-0.

Getting knocked out of the playoffs in the first round was disappointing, but that was a hell of year we had in 1996. That might have been as good a coaching job as Ray and I had been associated with. We had to overcome a quarterback injury as well as numerous other injuries, yet we still won ten games in the NFL and really had a chance to beat the 49ers in San Francisco. Had we not turned the ball over and done some other crazy things in the red zone, maybe we would have won that day.

As I was driving to work the next day I was listening to WIP and some guy called in and said, "Jon Gruden . . . if his IQ was one point lower he'd be a plant. He's worthless. He's a moron."

The host agreed with him, of course.

After that second season I ran into Bruce Allen again. The Raiders were looking for a head coach, but Bruce said they wanted to talk with me again about being the offensive coordinator.

"No," I said. "I only want to interview for the head coaching job. I have a coordinator's job. We've been to the playoffs two years in a row. I already interviewed for a coordinator's position with the Raiders. Now I want to interview as a candidate to be head coach."

The next day Bruce called.

"What we talked about yesterday?" he said. "You've got it.

You're going to interview for this head coaching job."

I flew out to California again, but this time straight to Oakland where I met with Bruce before heading over to Al's house for the interview. We sat out by Al's pool and he pulled his chair close to mine, to where we were sitting practically face-to-face.

We talked about everything-the philosophy of the offense, the philosophy of the head coach, the history of the Raiders and the vision of the organization as he saw it as the owner.

Al's interview was not like any I had ever been through before. He changed gears constantly. His questions went from left field to right field, from shortstop to second base. His interviewing technique was magnificent. It was a stimulating, awesome line of questioning from a man who knew all there was to know about the NFL, including the salary cap, which other owners, club executives and coaches still have a hard time figuring out. He had seen it all in football.