jeanpierre

***This is parody***

burningmetal

Good for Mike Mayock. I keep hearing soundbites of Gruden kissing Antonio's butt so as not to offend him. It's good to see that Mayock had some balls.

You don't make demands as an employee. You make requests, respectfully. Giving an ultimatum to sign a crappy QB to make some political statement is unacceptable, and I hope he stays retired. I'm tired of hearing about him.

frydaddy

That's not Rappoport's real twitter account, @docmccockiner lol. AB is a clown, no doubt, but this is a fake story.

burningmetal

I didn't even look at his twitter name. I can never make sense of twitter language, so I generally ignore it. But yeah, I guess that name doesn't exactly look real, lol.

I still hope AB retires, along with all of the other divas who are like him.

K Major

AB hadn't been in his right frame of "mind" in quite a while. He's gone. All the warning signs were there last 2 seasons up in Pittsburgh. Ultimate Diva.

I don't feel sorry for Raider Nation (Gruden) one bit.

vpheughan

Gruden to AB "Let me tell you about a real player, Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrretttt Favvvvvvre"!

CHA_CHING

For all those people who screamed for the past decade that Gruden needed to coach whatever team with a good QB to improve them, we tried to tell you.

RailBoss

I think that magic Gruden coaching ship left port a long time ago, all that's left now is Chucky in a leaky rowboat.

CHA_CHING

I don't think Gruden ever had magic. He was at the right place, at the right time.

His claim to fame came in that weird 3 year span between 1999 to 2001 where the NFL was at a historically weak point.

There were no great teams during that 3 year span. The perennial playoff contenders of the 90's decade like Buffalo, Kansas City, Denver, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Green Bay and San Fran were all undergoing management changes, roster overhauls and coaching changes.

The only teams during this 3 year time frame to make the playoffs were the Rams and Bucs. This is why their players are over-represented in the Hall of Fame. At the time those Rams teams looked like one of the greatest all time teams, but they were really just a good team beating up on a bad league. Both of them looked like beatable the few times they were actually challenged by teams that didn't roll over for them.

Quarterbacks Dan Marino, John Elway, Warren Moon, Boomer Esasion, Jim Kelly, Steve Young and Troy Aikman all had retired. Meanwhile up and coming QBs Mark Brunnell and Drew Bledsoe were having rough seasons, proving that they really weren't about to light the league on fire. Brett Favre was stuck on a Packers team rebuilding and Peyton Manning was still young with a Colts team that wasn't close to becoming what they would be in the following years. All this led to guys like Rich Gannon, Trent Green and Jeff Garcia competing for All Pro selections during this time frame.

Case in point about how weak the NFL was back then - The 1999 Rams still to this day have the absolute easiest strength of schedule of any SB team in league history. They were 0-3 against the only teams they played above .500 and they looked beatable in all 3 of their playoff games. The 2000 Ravens also had super inflated defensive stats from playing one of the worst list of starting QBs that any historical defense faced.

Rich Gannon was already a proven backup from his time in Minnesota and K.C. where he could've easily been the starter. Gruden didn't develop a guy with nearly a decade of experience in the league.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Gruden's offenses were horrible in Tampa Bay. He runs an out of date west coast offense that most of the league had figured out by the early 2000s.

Brad Johnson was a game manager QB and Gruden tried to make him into Gannon 2.0. Johnson's INT percentage shot up dramatically in that offense. When he failed to develop a QB from the draft, he turned to washed up backups looking for the next Rich Gannon.

The mythology of Gruden was entirely built around him winning a SB with a team that had a historical ranked defense that had been slowly built by another coach.

And one last thing - as for all the talk about how he was going to ace this draft and they were robbing teams of draft picks, LOL. Pull up his draft record in Tampa Bay. He never really drafted all that well there. His one great pick was Cadillac Williams, a good RB but in this league, but still that one position that is the most inter-changable in the league.

K Major

He wants the attention.

Entertainment (Hard Knocks) TV.