If you are looking for a sign that we have reached the silly season of the NFL offseason, look no further than a rumor put out this week by The Athletic’s Zack Rosenblatt that the Jets contact former Raiders
and Buccaneers head coach Jon Gruden about joining Aaron Glenn’s staff.
For whatever it’s worth, WFAN’s Craig Carton suggested he heard the same thing.
The source himself, however, has refuted the report. In an interview, Gruden himself called the rumor “stupid.”
The idea of Gruden joining Aaron Glenn’s staff as an assistant coach was nothing short of absurd. Gruden hasn’t been an assistant coach since 1997. Since then he has had two stints as head coach of the Raiders along with a stint as head coach of the Buccaneers. In between he has built a successful media career. It’s tough to imagine him taking an assistant job for the first time in close to three decades to work for the league’s least successful franchise and a coaching staff that will likely be be on the hot seat sooner rather than later.
The rumor was so ridiculous that at first I thought it was some sort of attempt at satire by Rosenblatt.
The other thing that comes to mind is sometimes when a team suspects an employee of leaking information to the press, they give that person a fake story to see whether it gets planted in the media.
I can’t say for sure what’s happening here, but I think we can all agree that Gruden won’t be joining Aaron Glenn’s staff.
