Jon Gruden under consideration as an addition to Saints coaching staff, sources say.
Following their poor 2023 campaign, the Saints are anticipated to make changes to their coaching staff. According to sources on Monday, former NFL head coach Jon Gruden is being considered as a potential acquisition.
During the Saints’ Week 17 road trip to Tampa, Florida, where Gruden resides, the team executives had a visit with Gruden, a Super Bowl-winning coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The night before the Saints’ game against the Buccaneers, he went to a team meeting and later that evening, the source said, he had dinner at a nearby restaurant with staff members, including Loomis;
The purpose of the visit with Gruden in Tampa is unknown, but if Gruden is not selected as the head coach of the NFL during the next hiring cycle, there is mutual interest between the parties, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
When asked if he will make changes to the team’s offensive coaching staff on Monday during his end-of-season press conference, Saints head coach Dennis Allen declined to get into specifics. When they get together this week to assess the 2023 campaign, he and the team’s brain trust will “look at everything,” according to him.
“I’m not going to go into any of those details in terms of what changes will occur,” Allen said during his 45-minute briefing with local reporters at the Saints’ Metairie training complex. “But there’s things that will have to be different.”
Gruden attended Saints training camp in August and the team’s minicamp in May as a non-paid observer. Gruden also visited Saints training camp as an observer in 2009.
Gruden has a strong relationship with quarterback Derek Carr, having coached him for three-plus seasons in Oakland/Las Vegas.
Carr passed for more than 4,000 yards in each of the four seasons he played for Gruden and posted the two highest passer efficiency ratings of his career in 2019 (100.8) and 2020 (101.4).
When asked if he would think about introducing fresh concepts or making systemic adjustments to the offensive scheme this offseason, Allen replied, “We always consider new ideas.” “ … We should stick with some of our attacking strategies that have shown to be effective in our league, in my opinion. But perhaps we should also consider how we might approach things differently.
A hearing in the case is expected to be conducted in the Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Leave a Reply