Is It Time For Mike Tomlin To Call An Old Friend?
Well, we finally made it to the bye week. It’s the same old story every week, Matt Canada is a garbage offensive coordinator trying to lead all the young offensive talent the Steelers have brought in over the past couple of years. The blind leading the blind. The Steelers need to stop with the inside hires and promotions from within. It’s time to get a real coordinator, a real football guy, a guru. The ever-polarizing Jon Gruden needs to return to Pittsburgh, this time with the Steelers as the Offensive Coordinator.
A Reunion Of Old Friends
Mike Tomlin should be very familiar with the way Gruden approaches the game. They spent time together in Tampa Bay, being part of the same staff for four years, even capturing Super Bowl 37 together with the Buccaneers. Tomlin was the Defensive Backs Coach while Gruden was the Head Coach. Maybe it’s time for a little role reversal of sorts. Flash forward to today and Mike Tomlin is the head coach of a Steelers team on the curve of a shift in generations. Tomlin finds himself with young guys yearning to be great in this league, including Quarterback Kenny Pickett.
Could Gruden Help The Steelers?
At this point, anything would be an improvement in the schematics department on the offensive side of the ball. Pickett showed us flashes last year but has been seeing ghosts this year. While Gruden couldn’t help much in the offensive line department, he might have some concepts and play designs that can help mask it. At this point, we’d take Jim from Squirrel Hill as the Offensive play-caller. You’re laughing, I’m crying.
We all remember Jon Gruden’s QB Camp, a show that documented Gruden’s film breakdown and evaluation of Quarterbacks. Gruden had some of the top guys at the time on the show like Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Cam Newton, and Patrick Mahomes to name a few. Gruden has a brain that knows how the quarterback position works. Getting a guy like him, a straight-up football junkie could be life-changing in the development of Pickett. Gruden may have grown up a Cleveland Browns fan, but this would be his chance to save the Pittsburgh Steelers and Mike Tomlin, who fans are increasingly disdainful of by the week.
Gruden’s History
Jon Gruden may go down as an all-time football guy if we separate the art from the artist. He’s been all over the place, starting his coaching journey way back in 1986 as a graduate assistant at Tennessee before bouncing around to places like Southeast Missouri State and Pacific before landing his first NFL gig with the 49ers in 1990 as an offensive assistant under Mike Holmgren, they ended up winning the Super Bowl.
After getting his first taste of pro ball in a significant way, Gruden decided to come back down to the college ranks and join what now looks like a star-studded coaching staff that had Nathaniel Hackett’s father Paul Hackett at the helm and Gruden as the Wide Receivers Coach and Marvin Lewis as the Outside Linebackers Coach. Now is his time to come back to the city of Pittsburgh and be a hero, not that it will be hard to be a hero after Matt Canada has been nothing but a villain for four years.
After his stint in Pittsburgh, Gruden was ready to move back up to the NFL full-time. He bounced around in the offensive rooms of the Packers and Eagles before landing his first Head Coaching gig with the Raiders in 1998 until 2002 when he was traded for two first-round picks to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where he would win Super Bowl 37 with Tomlin on his staff and be the head coach until 2008. After that, Gruden got into broadcasting and the QB Camp stuff until 2018 when he returned to the Raiders, signing a mega deal to be the Head Coach again. He returned because of his need to compete, a true football guy.
That’s when Gruden’s world came crashing down on him. Between all the misses on draft picks, awful trades that sent Amari Cooper and Khalil Mack out of town, and the whole email scandal that went down where it was uncovered that Gruden said some pretty messed up and offensive stuff, his grave was all but dug for the time being. It was time for him to step away and work on himself as a person.
Nowadays Gruden finds himself as a Consultant for the New Orleans Saints. He was spotted working with Derek Carr before the season, a guy he was familiar with in his time with the Raiders. He still has the itch, it never goes away for a guy like that. It’s a fire that lives on with you until you die. A fire that the City of Pittsburgh and the Steelers need more than ever.
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Should The Steelers Hire Gruden
YES
NO