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Tony Avelar/Associated Press
To understand why the Raiders have hired Jon Gruden -and sources tell me the deal is done-you have to go back to how the legend of Gruden was created.

I wrote a chapter of a book, Bloody Sundays, on Gruden and followed him for months when he was coaching in Tampa. He was obsessed, and I mean that in the best of ways. Often, he was in the Buccaneers offices by four or five in the morning. Once I was even there at three-something, and while I was in a caffeinated haze, Gruden was talking about play-calling and route trees.

Back then, Gruden always believed that the key to coaching was outworking your opponent. His wife, Cindy, once told me her husband was awake while he slept.

Hired to lead the Raiders at the age of 35, Gruden's legend grew at warp speed. After four years in Oakland and a 38-26 cumulative record, he was traded to Tampa, where he won the Super Bowl in his first season there. Though he finished his seven-year run with the Bucs with a 57-55 mark, the legend of Gruden and how he would spend every waking minute working to find an edge had been established. And there was always one man who was as enchanted with Gruden as anyone: Raiders owner Mark Davis.

Davis has tried to hire Gruden out of the ESPN booth several times before, I'm told by a number of league sources. On each occasion, Gruden said no and emphasized to Davis he was never coaching again. But within the past year, something changed inside Gruden. He got tired of talking about football and wanted to coach again. He and Davis connected, and now here we are, with the announcement that Gruden will become the Raiders' new head coach a mere formality.

And that means the Raiders are back.

Gruden will fix the issues and knuckleheaded-ness of quarterback Derek Carr. He'll build a better offensive line. He'll shore up defensive issues.
George Gojkovich/Getty Images
Gruden is also perfect for today's NFL. So much of football now is about scheming and play-calling. Yes, you must have the athletes, but a good coach can cover for a team's flaws, and Gruden is excellent at attacking and dissecting defenses.

Simply put, this is the best hiring of this offseason, and it promises to return the Raiders to greatness. It's true.

We'd be remiss, however, if we didn't point out that the Raiders seemingly ignored NFL rules in making the move. In coming to what sources describe to B/R as an agreement with Gruden, minus a full process of interviewing other candidates, the Raiders blatantly violated the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview a minority candidate for front office and head coaching positions. Pay little attention to the backtracking the Raiders may offer as they go through the show of interviewing others in the next few days; they flaunted the rule, and they're not the first team to do so. But that's a story I'll explore on another day soon.

In football terms, though, this is a great day for the Raiders franchise.

It will not be easy for the locker room. Gruden can be hard on players. The stories I've heard about how he treated some Buccaneers are staggering.

He can be nasty, petulant and petty, especially to quarterbacks, so buckle up that chinstrap, Derek.

It may not be easy for Gruden, either, as he must adapt to the modern NFL player. Don't forget it's been a decade since he last walked a sideline. Berating players the way he used to won't work now. He'll get run out of the league.

But if Gruden can adapt to the mentality of today's player (and I think he can), his technical skill and deep understanding of the sport will be tremendous assets.

Some may disagree with how much of an impact he will have. And it cannot be denied that in his last six years with Tampa, he was 45-51 with no playoff wins (0-2). Nor can it be forgotten that some criticized Gruden's Super Bowl win as having been accomplished with Tony Dungy's players. But I see Gruden as a franchise-changing element.

We will see who is right.
Reinhold Matay/Associated Press
In many ways, Gruden's move back to the NFL reminds me of when Bill Parcells came back to revitalize the Cowboys and later the Dolphins out of broadcasting. I know both men, and I've always felt Gruden was a younger version of Parcells. They use similar motivation styles.

When Gruden made the move to television, it shocked people close to him. They saw him as someone who would be in coaching forever, much like Parcells. It turns out, however, television was just a temporary stop, as it was for Parcells.

Now Gruden is back.

And so are the Raiders.

Mike Freeman covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter:@mikefreemanNFL.

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If Jon Gruden Really Is Back, So Are the True Raiders

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Tony Avelar/Associated Press To understand why the Raiders have hired Jon Gruden -and sources tell me the deal is done-you have to go back to how the legend of Gruden was created. I wrote a chapter of a book, Bloody Sundays, on Gruden and followed him for months when he was coaching in Tampa.

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OAKLAND, Calif. - Jon Gruden had plenty of opportunities to return to an NFL sideline over the past several years. Until Tuesday, though, he opted instead to stay in the friendly, and well-compensated, confines of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" broadcast booth.

What pulled him back after nine years away from the game was not the lucrative contract offer of the Oakland Raiders, he says, but rather, unfinished business as the team's head coach.

"Yeah, there is unfinished business," Gruden said Tuesday at his introductory news conference, again taking the reins of a team that traded him away in 2002, four years after giving him his first head coaching job. "As a coach, I've been traded. I've been fired. I've missed the game terribly.

"But I've really missed the Raiders. For my career [here] to end on that night in New England, it still ticks me off."

Gruden is referring to the 2001 AFC division playoff game between the Raiders and New England Patriots - a now legendary game played on a snow-covered field that began Tom Brady and Bill Belichick's historic run of five championships with the Patriots. After that season, the Raiders made the rare move of trading away Gruden to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with whom he won Super Bowl XXXVII in his first season.

After agreeing to a massive $100 million contract that spans 10 years, Gruden will now have a chance to write a new ending with the Raiders. He will also help author the beginning of the team's time in Las Vegas when it relocates there, likely for the 2020 season, pending the completion of a new stadium. Still, Gruden said it was his love for the city of Oakland that helped bring him back.

"I love the city of Oakland," Gruden said. "I had a son here. Some of my great memories of my life are in Oakland, and I want to give them two of the best years of football that I can possibly help deliver."

Gruden was introduced while sitting alongside team owner Mark Davis, who said he had pursued Gruden for six years and called this "the biggest day of my life." On Gruden's other side sat Raiders General Manager Reggie McKenzie, with over 100 media members in attendance along with more than two dozen franchise legends, including Howie Long, Tom Flores, Charles Woodson and Tim Brown.

McKenzie's presence answered one question about Gruden's return to the franchise - specifically, who will be working alongside Gruden in Oakland's front office. Gruden answered another when he confirmed that he, as expected, would be calling plays for the Raiders next season.

Many other questions remain, however. Gruden himself pointed out several times during the half-hour news conference that he has "a lot to prove" after spending the last nine years outside of the game - an odd admission from a man who was just given a decade-long contract with an annual eight-figure salary.

"I have not coached since 2008," Gruden said. "I haven't won a game since 2008.

"I've got to hire a great coaching staff. . . . It's about the people, it's about the staff, it's about the tempo we establish as a coaching staff. With that said, I have a lot to prove, and I know that."

Gruden officially announced his selections for the team's coordinator positions, tapping Los Angeles Rams quarterbacks coach Greg Olson as his offensive coordinator and installing Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Paul Guenther and Dallas Cowboys special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia in those same roles in Oakland.

Gruden's rapid hiring - first rumored before his predecessor, Jack Del Rio, had officially been fired - prompted some question whether the team complied with the NFL's "Rooney Rule," which mandates a team interview minority candidates for any head coaching opening. McKenzie confirmed that the Raiders complied by interviewing a pair of minority candidates: Raiders tight ends coach Bobby Johnson and USC offensive coordinator Tee Martin.

The league Gruden returns to will look markedly different than what he left in 2008 when he was fired as the head coach of the Buccaneers, particularly in regard to the use of social media by players and teams.

"Technology's changed. Technology is incredible," Gruden said. "I talk to my kids about Snapchat, Instagram, all that stuff. We're going to have conversations about that [with players]. I think you have to monitor it. I think you have to be careful what you read because it's not as always true and it's not always positive. You have to be careful what you post because sometimes it backfires against you. But it's no different than talking in a microphone. You're responsible for your actions, and we'll talk about that at length with our team."

The NFL is concluding a turbulent season that saw the continuation of pregame demonstrations during the national anthem, including by a number of Raiders players, to protest police violence against minorities that divided many fans and earned the ire of President Donald Trump. Gruden did not address a question by The Washington Post about whether he had any issue with anthem protests. Answering a prior question about the possibility of anthem protests by some of the Raiders players contributing to the team's 6-10 record this past season, Gruden said, "I'm going to look into all that. Honestly, I'm not aware of any protests, I'm not really aware of that subject at all. When I gather some information, maybe we can cover that subject later."

In the meantime, Gruden - in a manic fashion that typified his time in the broadcast booth - said he was ready to get to down to business.

"We need to get through this day, lock the doors and get to work," he said.

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Jon Gruden returns to Raiders to settle "unfinished business"

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OAKLAND, Calif. - Jon Gruden had plenty of opportunities to return to an NFL sideline over the past several years. Until Tuesday, though, he opted instead to stay in the friendly, and well-compensated, confines of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" broadcast booth.

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Jon Gruden would be a dramatic hire for the Oakland Raiders, there's no doubt. But would he be the right hire? Here, there's doubt.

Word leaked out this week that the Raiders were making an all-out effort to secure the return of the popular coach and analyst, who parted ways with the team after the 2001 season and left coaching entirely after the 2008 NFL season. Gruden fessed up to genuine interest in returning to the Silver and Black.

Gruden could be a success in a reunion stint. But he most likely won't live up to expectations, for three reasons:

1. Those expectations are exceedingly high. That's the case even for someone who was celebrated as a coaching prodigy and who in Tampa Bay in 2003 became the youngest coach ever at that point to win a Super Bowl (Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin would one-up him six years later).

Given that, it wouldn't be enough for Gruden to take the Raiders to the playoffs; he'd need to advance deep into the playoffs and win more than one Super Bowl for fans and the media to see his tenure as more than a disappointment.

Since moving from the sidelines to the broadcasting booth, the intense and charismatic Gruden has represented a King Arthur figure, a Boy Wonder destined to return and rescue various pro and college fan-bases who dreamed that he might replace whichever mortal was mismanaging their favorite team.

Yet a chunk of the Gruden mythology is just that-a myth, of the Camelot variety. Although his first season at Tampa Bay yielded a 12-4 regular season record and a Super Bowl ring, he actually achieved a losing record over the next six seasons, resulting finally in his dismissal. Why exactly do so many fans and officials around the NFL dream they'd extract something better from Gruden the next time around?

2. In most industries, the environment changes faster than the leaders do. Leadership is a highly situational art. Someone who's spectacularly successful in one particular place at one particular moment often can't replicate that success at the same place at a different moment. Gruden was something new under the sun at the beginning of this century, but it takes a leap of faith to be sure that he will be brighter in 2108 than the other bright minds who have come up more recently through the coaching ranks and who have been battle-tested more recently.

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The Raiders And Jon Gruden: Why Nostalgia Is A Bad Reason To Pick A Leader

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Jon Gruden would be a dramatic hire for the Oakland Raiders, there's no doubt. But would he be the right hire? Here, there's doubt. Word leaked out this week that the Raiders were making an all-out effort to secure the return of the popular coach and analyst, who parted ways with the team after the 2001 season and left coaching entirely after the 2008 NFL season.