It’s been nearly 20 months since Jon Gruden stepped down as head coach of the Raiders, and in that time he’s kept his distance from the NFL. But that finally changed this week after Gruden decided to fly to New Orleans to help out an old friend.
According to NOLA.com, Gruden spent some time with the Saints this week in an effort to help Derek Carr transition from the offense he was on with the Raiders to the one he will be on with the Saints.
The Saints offense should already be somewhat familiar to Carr and that’s because it’s similar to what he did with the Raiders while Gruden was the coach. Gruden’s offense is similar to the one in New Orleans in that the Saints’ current offense was originally installed by Sean Payton. While he’s gone, not much has changed since his departure, as the man who now leads the Saints forward (Pete Carmichael) was an assistant under Payton at New Orleans for 16 seasons.
Payton and Gruden share a similar offensive philosophy due to their time together in Philadelphia. During the 1997 season, Gruden was the offensive coordinator for the Eagles while Payton was the quarterbacks coach.
“I’m used to that family of offenses,” Carr said via NOLA.com. “It’s all the same drawing, but different words… It’s just different words that mean different things.”
Since the Saints and Raiders have many similar offensive concepts, the Saints thought it would make sense to bring in Gruden to help Carr transition and so the quarterback was reunited with his old coach.
“It’s a new system, new words,[but]a lot of similarities to things I grew up with and believe in,” Carr said. “It’s still a learning curve, but not as big a curve as in any other system or offense.”
Gruden was Carr’s coach for three and a half years, but eventually resigned as Raiders coach back in October 2021 after multiple emails were leaked in which he used misogynistic, homophobic and racist language.