How Jon Gruden, Sean McVay complete the circle of (football) lifeRaiders coach mentored Rams whiz kid and their families go back almost 50 years
By JERRY MCDONALD |
jmcdonald@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: September 8, 2018 at 6:00 am | UPDATED: September 8, 2018 at 7:55 am
Sean McVay was a quality control assistant under Jon Gruden in 2008, but his real education began after they were both fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following the season.
In a dingy office at a Tampa strip mall, the 22-year-old coach learned Gruden’s attention to detail included concentric circles.
Gruden borrowed a couple of greaseboards from the nearby Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena League. He invited McVay, his younger brother Jay Gruden and a few other aspiring coaches for a clinic on a Bucs playbook that no longer existed.
“We went through every play,” Gruden said Friday after the Raiders wrapped up practice. “I’d get up there and install it, and we’d watch a cut-up of it, and I’d have them re-install it, to see if they could do it.
“So McVay got up there, he drew his sideways circles, and I said, `Get your ass out of here. You can’t draw circles?’ ”
Everyone laughed. But Gruden had made his point.
Fast-forward a decade. McVay is regarded as one of the brightest young coaches in the NFL, having turned the Los Angeles Rams from a 4-12 disaster to 11-5 division champions.
In Gruden’s first game back after being out of coaching for nine seasons, the mentor and one-time student will attempt to run circles around each other. The Raiders host the Rams on Monday Night Football, Gruden’s old stomping ground.
It’s the latest intersection between the McVay and Gruden families that goes back half a century from the time Sean’s grandfather John McVay hired Gruden’s dad as an assistant coach at Dayton University.
So Jon Gruden knows Sean McVay better than most.
“We have to try and slow down that rise. We have to try to douse the flames,” Gruden said. “He’s smoking right now. It’s been exciting, man. Any time you see a young guy come into a profession and do what he’s done, it’s awesome.”
McVay’s ascension came quicker than it did for Gruden. As a 34-year-old head coach, Gruden was hired by Al Davis in 1998, had a pair of 8-8 seasons before winning two AFC West titles and was traded to Tampa Bay.
The Gruden and McVay methods and style are eerily similar.
McVay is more calm on game day, but looks like Gruden and talks like Gruden. Greg Olson, an offensive coordinator on the 2008 Tampa Bay staff, was the Rams quarterbacks coach last year before coming back to work for Gruden.
“Sean used to use a lot of Gruden-isms, how he spoke to the team,” Olson said. “They’re two different coaches, different people, but when I got to Sean’s staff I thought it was entertaining to say the least.”
Raiders tight end Derek Carrier, who played for the Rams last season, said both Gruden and McVay will forcefully make a point during meetings punctuated by a joke to keep it light.
Both coaches are flattered by the comparisons. During his last year on Monday Night Football, Gruden beamed when he showed producer Jay Rothman a video on his phone of McVay in a postgame locker room scene that would have made Gruden impersonator Frank Caliendo proud.
“You would have thought it was a mirror of Jon,” Rothman said. “The way he spoke, the things he said, it was ridiculous. Jon was laughing, but I could tell it was a proud moment for him, seeing the influence he had on Sean.”
In a conference call with Bay Area media, McVay conceded, “You know, subconsciously I probably have picked up on some of those things.”
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Besides working for Jon in Tampa and making regular visits to Gruden’s “Fired Football Coaches of America” offices over the years for strategy sessions, McVay also worked under head coach Jay Gruden as offensive coordinator in Washington.
Rams coach Sean McVay talks it over with quarterback Jared Goff. Getty Images
“You realize that you have the opportunity to even be in this role because of the contribution that family has made to me,” McVay said.
It’s a tangled web between the Grudens and McVays, with the common thread a love of family and football.
Jim Gruden, Jon’s father, worked on John McVay’s staff at Dayton. When Jim Gruden became an assistant coach at Indiana, he recruited Tim McVay, John’s son and Sean’s father.
Jim Gruden later got into scouting with the 49ers. The 49ers general manager was John McVay.
With the 49ers, Jim Gruden recommended Jon to offensive coordinator Mike Holmgren, who was seeking a young assistant.
“Mike was looking for a guy to break down film and I told him to interview him,” Jim Gruden said in a phone interview.
With the 49ers, Jon Gruden performed many of the tasks that Sean McVay would later execute for the Buccaneers.
“When Sean came out of college and wanted to get into the profession, of course Jon was going to give him a break,” Jim Gruden said. “There a lot of ties, and the families have known each other for years and years.”
Sean McVay described his relationship with Jon Gruden as one where “he kind of puts his arm around you, really teaches you about what you need to know about the game.”
Jon Gruden said he and Sean “have been able to see this business at close range. Our fathers have been hired and fired and hired again, and they’ve seen success. We have a healthy respect for the profession of coaching . . . we’re both offensive guys, both call plays, both enjoy being around a quarterback. We could probably talk about the similarities endlessly. He’s just a lot younger and better looking.”
And now he can draw circles.