Last week, it was reported that Jon Gruden visited the New Orleans Saints to attend practices and work with offensive coaches to engineer their offense around Derek Carr.
This comes more than a year after he faced major backlash from an email leak that forced him to step down as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Gruden coached Carr on the Raiders from 2018 to 2021 before his departure.
Per ESPN’s Katherine Terrell, Saints head coach Dennis Allen defended the team’s decision to invite Gruden.
“We’ve had several coaches come and visit,” Allen said. “Obviously, Jon’s a guy that has a lot of experience with Derek, and Derek has had his most success under Jon Gruden. And so we felt like bringing him in, having a chance to sit down and visit with him as an offensive staff, with the quarterbacks and just getting some new thoughts and ideas of things we might be able to implement.”
Allen also wasn’t concerned about any backlash from welcoming Gruden in spite of his hateful remarks.
“You ask everybody that was involved and they thought it was really beneficial for our football team,” Allen said. “And look, we’re going to look at any avenue that we can to try to improve.”
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The Raiders ran a West Coast offense when Gruden was the head coach. Carr has some familiarity with it as the Saints run a similar offense.
Carr, who was a second-round draft pick in 2014 and spent nine seasons with the organization, was released at the beginning of the offseason after he was benched for the final few weeks of the 2022 regular season.
The Saints’ offense was stagnant last season as they finished 19th in yards gained and 22nd in points scored. Just an average offense could’ve changed everything for them.
