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Raiders hire Jon Gruden as Head Coach


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19 minutes ago, ChazStandard said:

I don't.

It's a crazy rule.

Not really.  Al Davis was pretty darn progressive and the Rooney Rule was as much his baby as Dan Rooney's - and Al was one of the biggest backers behind it.

You have to go back to when the rule was put in place to understand why it was put in place: At the time there had only been 6 total non-white head coaches hired in the history of the league, only two such were active head coaches, and one of those had been fired on the back of a winning season (along with one of the other six who had similarly been fired that same year on the back of a winning season).  You have to go back and look at how long it took someone like Tony Dungy to even get hired as a HC in the first place and that was with one of the best modern HC's (Chuck Noll) in the game very vocally lobbying on his behalf.

The NFL coaching community is a major bastion of nepotism.

Now you can make the argument that it's still largely a flaunted rule by many teams; a sort of technicality to get out of the way, whereas with others it's not even really sweated because often there's at least one worthy candidate who is also a POC who you ought to be interviewing if for no other reason than to do proper due-diligence.  There was an interesting discussion the other day on Twitter as to whether the Rooney Rule ought to be waived for the Raiders in this instance because of Al Davis' legacy, and Amy Trask (who was both a worthy and a progressive/diversity hire by Davis at one time) chimed in that that would be something Al absolutely wouldn't have wanted.  Teams have the option of just paying a fine if they voluntarily forego the rule - and if the numbers ever get really disproportionately skewed again, then it might be a time to revisit and up the punitive recourse on teams opting not to comply, but the rule has done more good than harm and it's far from crazy.

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Its hilarious to see people laughing at the pay out. It has no impact on the cap whatsoever. If Mark wants to pay him $20 million, cool. If anything I think Head Coaches and GMs have been very underpaid in the NFL. Gruden is a football junkie, he lives it 24/7. We'll see how he does but the last thing I'm worried about his his salary.

 

Chucky is back.

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Maybe we've reached a point that the Rooney rule is no longer necessary. It never guaranteed jobs just getting the foot in the door by getting an interview. If there seems to be a problem with an NFL franchise in the future they should investigate and go from there. No need to have this rule for every franchise in 2018 I wouldn't think. We've had a minority President so I think the majority outweigh the small minded by a large enough margin that we can investigate on a case by case basis instead of assuming that no one will accept the best candidates regardless of etc... to interview.

Anyway, I may have said too much. I see no problem with the contract unless it forces the Raiders to hang onto Gruden when it's obvious he is in over his head. I don't suspect that will be the case. Then again, Hue Jackson is 1-31 over his 2 years and is still working so Gruden isn't going to do worse than that and there will always be a worse case scenario to point to for Raider fans. You're welcome.

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24 minutes ago, The LBC said:

Not really.  Al Davis was pretty darn progressive and the Rooney Rule was as much his baby as Dan Rooney's - and Al was one of the biggest backers behind it.

You have to go back to when the rule was put in place to understand why it was put in place: At the time there had only been 6 total non-white head coaches hired in the history of the league, only two such were active head coaches, and one of those had been fired on the back of a winning season (along with one of the other six who had similarly been fired that same year on the back of a winning season).  You have to go back and look at how long it took someone like Tony Dungy to even get hired as a HC in the first place and that was with one of the best modern HC's (Chuck Noll) in the game very vocally lobbying on his behalf.

The NFL coaching community is a major bastion of nepotism.

Now you can make the argument that it's still largely a flaunted rule by many teams; a sort of technicality to get out of the way, whereas with others it's not even really sweated because often there's at least one worthy candidate who is also a POC who you ought to be interviewing if for no other reason than to do proper due-diligence.  There was an interesting discussion the other day on Twitter as to whether the Rooney Rule ought to be waived for the Raiders in this instance because of Al Davis' legacy, and Amy Trask (who was both a worthy and a progressive/diversity hire by Davis at one time) chimed in that that would be something Al absolutely wouldn't have wanted.  Teams have the option of just paying a fine if they voluntarily forego the rule - and if the numbers ever get really disproportionately skewed again, then it might be a time to revisit and up the punitive recourse on teams opting not to comply, but the rule has done more good than harm and it's far from crazy.

I understand the context. It's still a crazy rule.

Putting aside positive discrimination being garbage - which I do believe it is - there's the simple question of effectiveness, and the lack there of. Simply put, the rule does nothing.

If there are racist owners out there who only want white coaches (which I don't think there are)...they will hire white coaches. The question of whether or not they have a token interview with black candidate is largely pointless. In this instance the rule achieves nothing.

If there are no racists owners, then they will hire who they believe to be the most qualified - regardless of race - and the rule, once again, achieves nothing.

Like I said, that's just one angle. There's also all the stuff about discrimination in any direction being wrong, patronising and just generally a bad idea. But I don't think we should go into that here.

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3 minutes ago, ChazStandard said:

I understand the context. It's still a crazy rule.

Putting aside positive discrimination being garbage - which I do believe it is - there's the simple question of effectiveness, and the lack there of. Simply put, the rule does nothing.

If there are racist owners out there who only want white coaches (which I don't think there are)...they will hire white coaches. The question of whether or not they have a token interview with black candidate is largely pointless. In this instance the rule achieves nothing.

If there are no racists owners, then they will hire who they believe to be the most qualified - regardless of race - and the rule, once again, achieves nothing.

Like I said, that's just one angle. There's also all the stuff about discrimination in any direction being wrong, patronising and just generally a bad idea. But I don't think we should go into that here.

The idea of the rule isn't that the owners are purposefully racist. It's the idea that black coaches were getting overlooked for many reasons (including some subconscious biases). You get them in the interview room, and they have a chance. Even if they aren't hired, their name gets out there, and they get experience with the process.

The rule has obviously achieved something. Mike Tomlin got his job because the rule got him in the room.

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I think Gruden is a nice hire. The salary means nothing if the owner is willing to pay it. Is it steep? Sure is but to get your guy and get someone who your familiar with and lead some solid teams is obviously worth it to them. When he was with Tampa he used a lot of cast offs and nobodies to QB his teams and never had a young talent to work with. Everyone wants to site those years and say he wasn’t a good coach but could you be successful with Bruce Gradkowski, Chris Simms, Brian Griese, Josh Johnson or Jeff Garcia leading your team? Absolutely not. Can’t wait to see how the raiders do and how Carr plays under him.

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15 minutes ago, Heinz D. said:

Why?

I don't want to necessarily speak for @Oregon Ducks because he has some out-there reasoning behind some of his positions, but speaking as someone with legitimate concern about the same position, adaptation was never Gruden's strength and until shown something to substantiate that he's learned how to do it, it's difficult to buy into him suddenly being able to have adapted to the modern game (now 15-ish years further from the last time he coached) just because.  He has a massive tape library.  Good for him.  It's probably a boon.  But from the sound of it, it's a boon for his defensive staff, it isn't going to do a heck of a lot for his offense if he doesn't translate notes from that tape library into changes within his offensive scheme to exploit weaknesses of the opposition shown in the tape (and that still assumes the player(s) haven't developed that weakness out of their game, they're playing in the same scheme... under the same or a similar coordinator, etc.).

The other genuine concern I have is Gruden's personality.  It's great for TV and it can be great for a team... when you're winning.  We saw this in Tampa, and I believe we heard about it after the fact from a number of Tampa players who were under him during those years they were struggling to make the playoffs, his constant chatter and the general attitude in the manner he addresses players can be really grating to players if the team is losing or in a stretch of adversity.  It becomes annoying and can breed resentment in a hurry.  Honestly, I don't think it's all that different from Chip Kelly's personality and we saw firsthand how quickly Chip lost that Eagles locker room when adversity reared its head and they weren't DVOA dynamos.

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