Raiders' Gruden: 'I'd like to eliminate instant replay'
Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden had thoughts to share Tuesday at the coaches' breakfast at the NFL owners meetings, saying he would like to get rid of instant replay and voicing his "surprise" that Colin Kaepernick remains unsigned by an NFL team.
"I'd like to eliminate instant replay, honestly," Grude'n said when asked what he would change now that he is returning to coaching. "That would be my No. 1 thing. Let the officials call the game. That's just my opinion. I try not to play that game of 'wish list,' you know what I mean?"
Gruden is returning to the Raiders after nine years in the broadcast booth for ESPN. He previously coached Oakland from 1998 to 2001 and spent seven seasons at the helm of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2002-08. The 54-year-old believes slow-motion is the "biggest problem" with the replay system.
"When you're looking at is it a catch or isn't it a catch at that speed it's hard to tell," Gruden said. "So I think if you threw that slow-mo out, I think you'd get back to common sense. Let the naked eye determine some of these calls. But it always looks like pass interference when you're going that slow; it always seems to look a little bit more dramatic in slow motion."
Gruden drew attention at the NFL Scouting Combine when he said he's "trying to throw the game back to 1998" with regard to modern analytics. He back-pedaled those comments to the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Monday.
"But when I say 1998, I'm going to do this very similar to how I did it then (when first joining the Raiders)," Gruden said. "We're going to bring in a lot of free agents that are going to help us send a message, set the tone. We did it (in 1998) with Richard Harvey and Anthony Newman and Elijah Alexander and Eric Allen. We brought in a lot of guys who were pros that love football, that will compete and fight for the Raiders. That's kinda what I meant, 'taking it back to 1998.'"
As for Kaepernick, Gruden laid out similar cases of other quarterbacks when describing his stance on the quarterback's unemployment.
"I think there's a lot of intrigue there," Gruden said. "His performance on the field wasn't very good, on tape. I think, Robert Griffin, a rookie of the year, [I'm] surprised he's out there. Tim Tebow takes a team to the playoffs, there's some surprise that he never came back. You know, Johnny Manziel, he's out there.
"Back to Kaepernick, he got beat out by Gabbert to start the season. I think that says something. I am surprised he's not in camp with somebody. He probably will be soon."
Kaepernick remained a free agent for all of the 2017 season, with many pointing to his decision to begin kneeling during the national anthem as the reason why.
--Field Level Media
