Jon Gruden has made the transition to the NFL broadcasting booth almost flawlessly and despite saying he loves his job and his new ESPN contract, Gruden's name always seems to come up for head coach vacancies and with the Texas Longhorns and Texans searching for a new coach and the Oakland Raiders having Dennis Allen on the hot seat, Gruden has come up once again.
This is nothing new for Gruden, who has been mentioned in nearly every head coaching search in football over the past few seasons, including in Tennessee for college football as well as places like Cleveland and other teams in the NFL. This time around it's the Texans, Oakland Raiders and the Longhorns and while they seem like longshots, all bets are off when it comes to Gruden and those jobs if they give him the control he wants. The Texans are an interesting job since they have a ton of talent with names like Andre Johnson, Arian Foster and JJ Watt, while the Raiders still have a coach in Dennis Allen, but he has won just eight games in his tenure with the team up to this point and will have won just a third of his games if the team loses out over the final two weeks of the season.
According to NFL.com and CBS Sports, Gruden would be "open to listening" about the Longhorns job and that comes after the team and Mack Brown decided to part ways and also after the ridiculous Nick Saban reports, which amounted to nothing. The Texas job is interesting because it is very high profile and that is the type of job Gruden would want and the type of hire they want to make, but Gruden in college is not Gruden in the NFL. Anyone that has read about Gruden knows he is a grinder that loves those 5 am work days and long hours breaking down tape and working with players, but college includes recruiting and plenty of other responsibilities and of course the rules about practice time and so on. The NFL seems more suited for Gruden's abilities, which makes the Texans and the Raiders interesting if Mark Davis fires Dennis Allen.
Davis firing Allen would seem to be a mistake, because the Raiders built this team knowing that it would be bad for a couple years as they get out of terrible financial situations, but the Matt Flynn deal was terrible and the defense hasn't improved like everyone had hoped. The team will miss the playoffs yet again and after coming off of a 4-12 season, Davis may feel that Allen should be the person to take the hit rather than Reggie McKenzie, who has made some mistakes, but has also cleared out tons of wasteful money for the team over the past two seasons.
The Raiders are now 4-10 this season and another two losses would give the team another 4-12 finish and 24 losses for Allen compared to eight wins and that would be a justification for Davis making a move. Reports say that the Texans have interviewed Lovie Smith, so that may not be an option for Gruden, but all three are interesting, as is whether he will leave the Monday night football booth or not.
