Oakland Raiders' Jon Gruden on brother Jay Gruden's firing: 'Welcome to the club, bro'
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Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden expressed disappointment Tuesday when talking about his younger brother’s firing from the Washington Redskins in the middle of his sixth season.
Jon Gruden said he knows what it feels like, having been traded from the Raiders to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during his first stint as head coach and then later getting fired by the Buccaneers even after winning a Super Bowl with the organization.
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“I'm obviously very disappointed for my brother,” Gruden told reporters during a media conference, according to ESPN. “It was a long night, last couple of nights. He worked hard. Got a lot of respect for my brother. Obviously, disappointed for him getting fired.
“My dad's been fired. I've been fired. Jay's been fired and ... welcome to the club, bro.”
Jay Gruden was in the middle of his sixth season with the Redskins. Washington had only been to the playoffs one time during Gruden's tenure and never won more than nine games in the regular season.
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Washington was 4-12 during Gruden's first season before improving to 9-7 in 2015 and 8-7-1 in 2016. But the team appeared to be moving backward the past two years, finishing 7-9 in each season before the nightmare start to 2019.
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After Sunday’s loss to the New England Patriots, Gruden offered some gallows humor when addressing his job security.
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“If the key works on Monday, I’ll keep working,” he told reporters, according to The Washington Post.
A stinging critique of the team's coaching from veteran running back Adrian Peterson in the aftermath of Sunday's loss also indicated Gruden's departure was probably coming sooner rather than later.
“It’s clear that something has to change,” Peterson told The Post. “That’s one thing you do know, because we are 0-5. We haven’t won. We haven’t been productive as an offense.”
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He added: “You got to go back to the drawing board and say, ‘Okay, as a coaching staff...what can we do better to put our players in better position to be productive as an offense, to be better as a defense?’ It’s their job to do that. We 0-5. What we’ve been doing, obviously, isn’t working.”
Assistant head coach Bill Callahan, who succeeded Jon Gruden as Raiders coach in 2002, was named interim head coach of the Redskins.