Jon Gruden played pivotal role in Derek Carr signing with New Orleans Saints

By all accounts, bringing in Jon Gruden to work with quarterback Derek Carr was the perfect solution to help the new Saints quarterback evolve from Vegas to New Orleans.

The Gruden sessions came last week as the Saints went through their first full team practices in phase three of OTAs. Derek Carr could glean new insight from Jon Gruden and so could the Saints offensive staff. But it wasn’t about reworking the New Orleans offense. Rather, the sessions focused on what to emphasize with Carr under center,

Coach Dennis Allen told reporters: “We felt like bringing him in, having a chance to sit down and visit with him as an offensive staff, with the quarterbacks and just getting some new thoughts and ideas of things we might be able to implement. I would say this … offensively for a long time that I’ve been here, we’ve been pretty effective. So, I don’t see us putting in a whole new offense or doing something dramatic. But if there’s a few ideas that we could take from that, we felt like that would be beneficial.”

Jon Gruden and Derek Carr last worked together in 2021. Gruden coached the Raiders and Carr was his quarterback. But Gruden resigned under pressure after he became a casualty of an NFL work-place harassment investigation of the Washington Commanders. The investigation discovered Gruden using racist, homophobic and sexist language.

Jon Gruden was obvious choice to help Derek Carr, Saints

He now does some consultant work. And in the Saints case, he proved to be the perfect person to bring in to tutor everyone about Carr, the quarterback New Orleans signed in March to a four-year $150 million deal. The Saints preferred Carr over other available quarterbacks because he knew how to run the offense.

“In Jon, we have a resource here that is football through and through,” Allen told Sports Illustrated. “And he’s had an opportunity to work with Derek Carr. So what better [way to use that] resource than to just get some thoughts and ideas on how he worked with Derek and what he thought worked well with Derek?”

Although Carr is new to New Orleans, he’s familiar to Allen. After all, Allen was the head coach of then Oakland Raiders when the team drafted Carr in 2014. And Gruden’s offensive concepts also aren’t new to Allen. He’s using the same basics Sean Payton ran when Payton coached the Saints. Gruden and Payton worked to develop this version of a West Coast offense when both were on staff with the Eagles 25 years ago.

The visit wasn’t added on a whim. Sports Illustrated reported that the date for Gruden’s on-field workshops changed three times. Allen told reporters that he wasn’t concerned about a potential backlash to bringing in Gruden.

“You ask everybody that was involved and they thought it was really beneficial for our football team,” Allen said. “And look, we’re going to look at any avenue that we can to try to improve. So that was one area we thought, just bringing him in and having the opportunity to sit down and visit with him, would help us.”