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Jon Gruden visiting Derek Carr and the New Orleans Saints during their offseason practice last week has not gone unnoticed. Dennis Allen, the Saints coach, has also entered the conversation after he said that Gruden's visit was beneficial for the team. While the Saints maintain that his visit was related to organizing the Saint's offense around Derek Carr in the coming season, controversies around Gruden have led many fans to bash the Saints on social media.
While Allen did not address specifically any of the controversies surrounding the former Raiders coach, he put out the following statement.
That naturally caused some strong reactions and fans were quick to castigate Dennis Allen. People took to Reddit to vent and were willing to challenge the Saints head coach's thinking. Others sarcastically commented that maybe Jon Gruden came because there were no people around whom he found offensive. Others even enquired if these thoughts were sent by email.
For context, during a league investigation into the practices of the franchise, it emerged that Gruden had sent virulently racist, sexist, and other bigoted comments in emails. On becoming public, he was fired by the Raiders and has since been shunned by the NFL community.
"Human psychology is so weird. Dudes 100% going to coach again sometime," one user on Reddit said.
Why did Dennis Allen bring in Jon Gruden when he knows Derek Carr himself?
Derek Carr, longtime Las Vegas Raiders quarterback, moved to the New Orleans Saints this year. While playing for the Raiders, one of his head coaches was Jon Gruden. For any quarterback moving to a new team, familiarity with the playbook and continuity are the two biggest factors for their success. Thus, the Saints brass thought it would be a good idea to bring the new quarterback's former coach in.
One question that has come from many people is that among Carr's former coaches, Dennis Allen is also one. The current New Orleans Saints head coach was the Oakland Raiders head coach (2012 - 2014) when the quarterback was drafted by the Raiders.
However, the truth is that even though their times overlapped, they never really got to work with each other. Dennis Allen was fired four games into Derek Carr's rookie season and Tony Sparano took in charge of the rest of the games. Jack Del Rio and Jon Gruden followed him. Of all the coaches he has played under, Derek Carr played the most under Gruden from 2018 to 2021.
Conversely, he played the least with Allen. Hence, it might have made sporting sense to bring Gruden in, though it does not seem to playing well outside the football field among the fans.
