Lo Siento, Jay
by Steve Thomas
Lo siento. Je suis désolé. In english, I’m sorry. What the heck is he talking about, you ask? Well, this is directed to Redskins head coach Jay Gruden. Those of you who have followed us since we started this website early in the 2015 offseason, or if you happened to know me before that point, are aware that I have been extremely critical of Gruden since practically the day he arrived here. I think my thoughts and feelings on Jay likely track many of you out there – whether you are a life-long die-hard, a casual fan, or the sort of person who is such a fanatic that you spend all of your free time running a Redskins website – so my intent with this piece is to reflect on and re-evaluate his time in DC now that season three of the Gruden era has ended.
Therefore, let’s take a trip back in time and see what we can see outside the window of the fan bus.
Gruden, in the offensive coordinator role in Cincinnati, was signed to a five year contract prior to the 2014 season by then-general manager and now team president Bruce Allen. During the coaching search, he was initially my first choice for Mike Shanahan’s replacement – but let me be honest, it was not because I had spent a ton of time studying his scheme. It was because he had a successful brother and because the Bengals had achieved a good bit of success with quarterback Andy Dalton. It was only after he was hired that I realized that Jay’s offensive scheme was not compatible with the starting quarterback at the time, Robert Griffin (you’ve heard of him, right?). Almost from the get-go, I thought that that particular marriage was never going to work, and Griffin was the guy who the Redskins should keep when it inevitably blew up. I liked Griffin: unbelievable athletic ability, a cannon for an arm, Heisman winner, charismatic, and, not to re-live a bad time, so let’s just charitably say he was “involved in controversy” that wasn’t necessarily totally his doing in 2013. As a result, I did not go into the 2014 season with the thought that good things were about to happen.
I was right. Griffin, when he was healthy, did not play the quarterback position well under Jay’s leadership. Gruden himself looked lost for large chunks of the season and publicly criticized players, particularly Griffin, in brutal fashion like I had never heard in the media from an NFL coach while not taking any blame himself. Absolutely nothing went right than season, and I called for his head, believing that Gruden was way too stubborn, totally unqualified, and unsalvageable. I thought at the time that the only way Griffin could be saved was to pair him with a head coach who could better understand and utilize his abilities. I didn’t much care for Gruden’s obvious Arena League tendencies, his stubborn insistence on sticking to the short dump-off game or his outright refusal to feature the run game. Much to my distress, the entire band came back for the 2015 season. Then, however, Jay made the power move early in the preseason to start Kirk Cousins, the guy who had been mostly terrible in relief for Griffin, and Griffin was benched and soon thereafter headed for the door. Suffice to say, I was not hopeful at that point that 2015 would end in anything but disaster. But lo and behold, much to my shock, 2015 saw admittedly inconsistent but improving offensive play and a Kirk Cousins who went from awful at the start of the season to all-pro level by its end. The 2016 season that just concluded revealed many problems, to be certain, but it ended with a winning record and an offense at the very top of the statistical rankings in many areas, including total yards gained, quarterback rating, and top ten in points scored. Yes, the season ended on a sour note with losses in two of the last three, including a soul-crushing interception at the very end of the last game against the Giants, but overall, things could have been much worse. Offensively, at least, the roots of a potent, explosive offense have germinated.
Here’s where the “lo siento” part comes in. Jay Gruden (1) has become today a better coach than I gave him credit for back in 2014, and (2) clearly made the right choice in dumping Griffin for Cousins. He has overseen the development of several players, including Cousins, Jamison Crowder, Jordan Reed, Spencer Long, and others. I was wrong and the team was right in sticking with Jay after the awful 2014 season, and I was wrong in criticizing him for benching Griffin. That sort of thing is why he’s an NFL head coach. He bet his coaching career on a bold move and won the bet. Looking back, the Redskins are a better team today, January 8, 2017, because head coach Jay Gruden is here.
Make now mistake: he isn’t the perfect coach. He has done a bad job hiring/retaining defensive coordinators and overseeing the defense in general, he’s made some abysmal clock management moves at crucial times, he doesn’t comprehend the value of the run game and consistently abandons it at the very first nanosecond of trouble, his playcalling suffers in the red zone, and I question whether his training camps are tough enough on the players. However, fundamentally, he’s a brilliant offensive mind and he has learned from some of his mistakes that he made in 2014. The passing game has opened up tremendously since 2014, particularly this year with Cousins having two full seasons under his belt. I give Gruden credit for how far his offense has come and the improvements he has made as a coach, and I regret jumping to conclusions about him.
My Hog Sty colleague, Rick Rogers, has breached patience with Gruden for quite a while now. His point always has been Gruden had potential and that jumping from coach to coach every few years for the past 2 decades has not really done the Redskins much good. He said that back in 2014, and although I didn’t want to hear it at the time, he was correct. He is also of the belief that some fans’ love of Robert Griffin clouded their judgment about Gruden’s performance as a coach. That included me, and he was right about that too. The time for the underlying hard feelings and distrust resulting from that 2014 season that some of you out there still harbor is over. Gruden has given the Redskins the first two winning seasons in a row since the 1996-97 campaigns. Kirk Cousins was, in retrospect, clearly the right choice for quarterback in his west coast offense system. The status of Cousins and his contract remains in doubt and is a topic for another column on a different day, but that aside, hasn’t enough progress been made to give Gruden the benefit of the doubt?
For those of you who are just casual fans, or who new to NFL fandome, the fourth year of a head coach’s five year contract is the most important year. It is uncommon for a head coach to play out the last year of a contract as a “lame duck” without an extension being signed. For example, Joe Gibbs retired after the 2007 season with one year left in lieu of playing out the 2008 season in obvious retirement mode. It just isn’t usually done unless the coach is on the hot seat, but not in quite enough trouble to be fired outright. Next season is therefore fairly critical. Make no mistake: Jay has a serious issue to deal with on defense – the team has not gotten better on this side of the ball under Jay’s leadership; in fact, by some measures it has gotten worse. In 2013, which was the last year of Mike Shanahan’s tenure, the Redskins gave up 478 points (31st) and 5665 total yards (18th)1. Since that time, the team has improved somewhat in points surrendered, but not to an acceptable level (2014: 438 (29th); 2015: 379 (17th); 2016: 383 (19th)), and has gotten worse since 2013 in yards surrendered (2014: 5712 (20th); 2015: 6090 (28th); 2016: 6046 (28th)). Plus, some of the peripheral and underlying stats have actually gotten worse. Now, he is now about to start on his third different defensive coordinator. However, Jay understands that he isn’t the coach of just the offense. He is aware that he has an obligation to fix this problem. A big part of the trouble is most certainly a lack of quality starting personnel, and blame for that lies squarely with the general manager, Scot McGloughan, but fault for the obvious coaching deficiencies belongs to Jay. If the defense doesn’t show improvement and the Redskins for some reason take a nosedive and do significantly worse than 8 – 7 – 1 next season, it is reasonable to wonder whether the front office will bring him back.
However, does that seem likely to you? Putting aside Kirk Cousins’ contract question for the moment, the Redskins were more or less competitive in 14 of 16 games this season, the Steelers and Panthers games being the two exceptions. That’s dramatically better than most seasons since Joe Gibbs’ first tenure. If the team focuses on defense in free agency and the draft, whomever is ultimately selected as the new defensive coordinator shows a pulse, and the team continues to roll on offense, doesn’t it seem like the Redskins have a decent shot at another winning record? If that’s the case, isn’t the smart thing to do to re-sign Gruden and give him the chance to continue down the path he’s been on since his baptism by fire in 2014? In fact, wouldn’t that make Jay the most successful Redskins’ head coach since Joe Gibbs?
With the season now one week in the rearview mirror, I have forced myself to admit that Jay might just be the answer provided that the defense starts to show signs of life. Maybe, just maybe, despite all odds and my firm initial belief otherwise, he really is the answer.
Yuck. I can’t believe I just wrote that. What a hypocrite I am.
1. Source for all stats: www.Pro-Football-Reference.com