Earlier this offseason, the Oakland Raiders made Jon Gruden their $100 million man. Gruden got a 10-year deal to return to Oakland, 17 years after leaving the franchise for the first time and 10 years after he last coached in the league.
Gruden's offseason plan for the Raiders has come under some fire -- including on this site -- with his preference for signing older players (Doug Martin, Jordy Nelson, Derrick Johnson), insistence on returning football to 1998 (singing two blocking tight ends and a fullback), and dismissal of analytics being the main focuses of the criticisms. Gruden has said he doesn't care about or listen to his critics, and that he's got a lot of coaches that he's friends with who are ecstatic about the Raiders' offseason.
In other words, he's incredibly confident that things are going to work out for his new team, regardless of the general reception to the moves they've made throughout this offseason. Just how confident is he? Well, on Tuesday, he essentially offered the Raiders a money-back guarantee.
"If I can't get it done, I'm not going to take their money," Gruden told USA TODAY.
Of course, Gruden didn't exactly define what "get it done" means. Does he mean winning a Super Bowl? Being the best team in the AFC West? Improving on the team's record under Jack Del Rio? We don't really know. So, there's no easy way to judge whether or not Gruden has hit his target, or whether he "needs" to give the Raiders their money back. Nor is there is target date by which he needs to "get it done," whatever "it" is.
Gruden's got a 10-year deal, which would seem to provide him a lot of leeway, but he says he's not concentrating on the length of his contract. "Who guarantees I'm going to live 10 years?" he said. "So I don't think about that. You start thinking about a 10-year contract -- people don't know how it's structured and it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is, 'Is Khalil Mack going to be here? Is Donald Penn going to be ready to play?' I've got more important things to worry about than eight years of my contract."
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