Jon Gruden: Super Bowl Glory, His Legendary Coaching Tree & What's Wrong with Today's Quarterbacks | On the Line with Jim Pyne

0:00 Welcome to On the Line with Jim Pine. I'm Jim Pine. This episode is brought to you by PLS Aviation. Private Aviation perfectly executed. Now let's get on the line. Today on the line we have one of the greatest coaches of all time. Offensive genius, in my opinion, Super Bowl winner, Buccaneers, all-time winningest coach, Raiders, Bucks, great guy, Tampa guy.

0:23 My friend, my old boss, Coach John Gruden. Coach, welcome to the show.

0:27 Jim Pine, man. Thanks for having me on. That's an awful nice introduction for a guy that hadn't won a game in a long time.

0:35 Nah, Ring of Honor, too. I forgot that. The Buccaneers. Amazing stuff, Coach. You've had a great run. And uh, you know, I I for me, it's it's great to have you on. I've had a front row seat in your meetings a couple years, worked for you. I was thankful enough, appreciate working for you. Learned a lot, a lot of energy, a lot of leadership, how to run a team, how to run an organization.

0:53 It was it was really amazing to see him part of it, so I really appreciate that.

0:57 Well, you were a big part of it. We had a lot of young, dynamic people, and those were some great years, great memories.

1:05 Absolutely. And dialing it back, so your dad, Jim Gruden, which you know, I had the privilege of meeting your dad, I think, years ago when I was playing for the Bucs. Your dad was a scout for the 49ers. He'd come back because he worked for the Bucs, the original Bucs, he knew everybody, great guy, just a legendary guy, and just always a high energy, good guy, football, just a just a fun guy to be around, man, had the juice.

1:28 And what did your dad mean to you? I know I've read all the stuff, seen all the stuff. I know he was he taught you everything, got you into football. But what talk to me about your dad.

1:37 Well, obviously, he was a coach. You know, I grew up son of an assistant football coach. He was a great high school coach, went on to coach at Dayton and Indiana. And when he went to Notre Dame, that was a game changer for me. I started hanging around the players. Joe Montana was there, the tradition, the fight song.

1:57 Uh I fell in love with it. And I knew I wanted a coach. I was around some of the greatest coaches on that Dan Devine coaching staff. And we won a lot of games. Sorry about that.

2:08 He's a busy man.

2:10 But we uh we we won a lot of games, and I fell in love with the profession, and I knew from the time I was about 16 years old, I wanted to be a coach. And I tagged along tagged along with him when he became an assistant coach with the Buccaneers. I would sit in there with Coach McKay and Wayne Fonse and the defensive staff, Abe Gibron, all these legendary guys.

2:33 And I just kept this passion alive, and the fire started burning, and the rest is history.

2:39 Yeah, no question. You just brought up a name, Abe Gibron, man. I remember when I was drafted, I played for the Bucs. I was in the old cream school uniforms way back. He was he'd show up at practice, legendary guy, and he he he liked me. He's like he'd go, that guy's pretty good. Like he liked, I don't know, however, I played, but that's a that's a great name from the past.

2:56 And uh so your dad, though, what did you do? You know, your dad taught you everything, I know, because my dad taught me everything too. What what did you do though? You said, hey, my dad used to do this. When I coach someday, I'm gonna do this too, what my dad did.

3:09 Well, I think the big thing is try to become an expert at your position. Don't be one of these guys that comes in and says, I can coach everybody. You know, he was a running back coach. He always was trying to find new drills, new way of teaching. Uh and he taught me at a young age, you should really learn as much as you can about the quarterback.

3:27 And if you can coach the quarterback someday, if you know what you're doing, you'll probably have a job for a while. And I did that. I really started studying quarterbacks, I committed my time and I put all my effort in to getting around the best quarterback coaches I could. And I was very lucky because my dad knew some people.

3:48 I got with Paul Hackett, who was a great quarterback coach, former coordinator of the Cowboys and the 49ers, and then I got around Mike Holmgren. But it was Walt Harris at Tennessee. My dad got me a job there as a GA. Walt Harris beat me up. He taught me so many things, and it really uh was an exclamation point on effort and learning how to work harder and how to study properly.

4:14 Don't just spend countless hours looking at film. What are you studying? Study red zone, study drills, study the footwork of the quarterback. You gotta continue to accumulate knowledge. And Walt Harris gave me the most that any coach ever gave me because he put me on a routine. You know, he he taught me how to not waste time, and for that I'll always be thankful.

4:39 Yeah, absolutely. Legendary guys, legendary names. Love it. I know your dad is a great guy. Now, your brother Jay. Jay, when I was on a staff with you, Jay was there too. Great guy. I followed Jay. I mean Louisville. I think I played him in college. So Jay Gruden. So Jay, it's a great guy, great career.

4:55 Arena ball, coach with you, then coach of the Redskins, now the commanders. What a growing up with Jay, what do you remember from that? What were some of the things? You guys always playing together, button heads, competing, or was it more, hey, we were brothers, we took care of each other. What was it like growing up with Jay?

5:10 Well, we were always competitive. We've always been supportive of one another. My older brother, Jim, is a doctor. He was a valedictorian in high school, was number one in his class at Notre Dame. And then I came along, I was like a 2.2 GPA. And then Jay came along, he was like a 2.1. So we were all a little bit different, but Jay and I competed, we played together, uh, and we support each other a lot now, the older we've become.

5:37 And he's still working with me now. We're doing a little Gruden football show once a week and uh having some fun. But having a brother that had the same interests uh was fun. It was a lot of fun, and um man, I wish I had those days back.

5:53 Yeah, no, great times. He was he was a great guy, very knowledgeable. He you know, he was he was had his own side job doing the the arena stuff during the weekend. He came over, didn't miss a beat, knew the offense, do everything, would call help you with the plays and stuff.

6:06 Yeah, we go back to those Buccaneer days. You know, I walk down the hall, I think about we got Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan and Jim Pine and Jay Gruda and Raheem Morris and there was Mike Tomlin. We had uh we had quite a factory back in the day.

6:21 We did, unbelievable. You and then you bring up your tree. I mean, unbelievable. I looked it up, coach. All the guys that you just mentioned, those guys, a bunch of more too that you were around, you helped a career, you helped him grow. Really great stuff. Yo, Kyle, you mentioned I worked hand-in-hand with Kyle side by side.

6:35 He was his first job in football. He's there, and obviously his dad was Mike Shanahan, but Kyle's just a smart guy, energetic, you know, wanted to make a difference. Kind of, you know, I'm sure with the name Shanahan in the back, it comes the pressure that, hey, I gotta go be my own guy, and he's clearly showing that today.

6:52 What do you take pride in? What do you see Kyle doing? Because he started with you.

6:56 Well, he didn't need much of my help. I just was very lucky. I I had a lot of respect for his dad. Having coached for the Raiders, Mike Shanahan beat me up pretty good. We finally beat him one time before I was sent away. But I have so much respect for Mike Shanahan. One day he called me and said, Would you hire my son?

7:15 And I was honored to do that. And um, we just put him in a room, we gave him a computer, we gave him a few assignments, and he ran with it. He was way ahead of the game, and you could see right away he had the it factor, and you knew it wouldn't take him long to get to where he is now.

7:32 Yeah, no question. An innovative guy. And that was the one thing, coaching. The meetings with you was always great, because I've been around football for a while, played, coach, been around stuff. With you is always high intensity. The stuff you do on your show now and your shows, it's real. Like I'm here to attest to it.

7:46 I mean, that in the meeting I was working for you, you'd be get up on that board, you draw up to play, you know, you circle the circle, you put the line over there, and you the juice, you turn to the staff, everyone would be like this. And you you'd you'd call a guy out in the staff, like, get up here, what are you gonna do?

8:00 What do you think? What's this? Challenging everybody. I l I loved it, the leadership, but nobody knew the offense better than you, which was key, right? I mean, you you were the leader, you you worked as harder than anybody, and you knew the offense. Where did that passion and juice come from, coach?

8:15 Is this something you had?

8:16 Well, I think my mom got it from her. She was a I I called her a Hall of Fame elementary school teacher. She just loved to help students get better. She would say, Jim, great job, you got 80%. Let's stay after school, and next week we'll get 90%. And as soon as you got 90%, she'd say, Hey, Jim, let's get in there a little bit in the morning, too, and we'll get 100%.

8:39 But she was always trying to get her students to get better. And I thought, you know, her creativity, you know, just don't teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. Make it dance, make it fun. And stir the pot of emotions once in a while. You try to inspire them, try to tick them off, make them laugh. Try to get them uh emotionally charged about coming in that meeting room and getting better.

9:04 And, you know, you're a salesman, Jim. You got to sit there as an offensive lineman or a wide receiver. You don't want a coach just drawing up plays and standing up there. You want somebody to make you convinced and excited about this is gonna work, man. You know, we're gonna get this movement here at the double team, and we're gonna come right off of that.

9:24 We're gonna smash these guys for six yards. So part of it was salesmanship, part of it was the passion for the game, and part of it was just trying to be a better teacher and making sure you guys got it and believed in it.

9:38 I believe it, yeah, absolutely. But buying into what you're putting up there, because you know the rooms, right? The football rooms, the locker rooms, they'll smell quickly like hey, if you're full of baloney. But if you're up there and you believe it and you live it and you're passionate about it, guys will run behind that and say, all right, this is what I'm coach.

9:53 Mike Holmgram, right? Early, you were on the staff, Andy Reid was there, Andy had him on the show. Andy's great, very complimentary. You guys are two young guys, legendary guys. You go off and you guys competed there too. So, but Mike Holgram, a legend himself, but took two teams to the Super Bowl, not in the Hall of Fame, by the way, which I don't I don't understand how he's not in the Hall of Fame when you look at his career record, but great coach.

10:16 What did he mean to you and how did he start, you know, what did he mean offensive football? What did he teach you?

10:21 Well, he was he was something else. I mean, he's like in my ring of honor. Uh he was a he had a rare ability to take something that was very complex and sophisticated and explain it in 25 words or less. I wouldn't say he was one of these guys that would stay in there for 20 hours a day. He made his time uh very uh conven he made it he's made his time very, I don't know what the word is.

10:48 Uh he used his time. He didn't waste it was he efficient.

10:52 Yeah.

10:52 He was very, if there you go, efficient. I don't use many s three-syllable words, but he was very demanding, he had a high standard, he was hard on coaches, and um he wanted us to be successful, but he all won he wanted all of us to be on the same page. But I think the one thing that he left me with the most is when we traded for Brett Favre, he convinced all of us that we are gonna make him successful.

11:17 Favre's coming in here, he's gonna be successful because we're making him successful. And he wanted everybody on board the defensive coaches, the secretaries, the training staff, the strength coach were making Favre successful. And I think when Brett walked in, he felt everybody's support and excitement.

11:36 And even when he struggled a little bit in '92 and '93 with the interceptions, everybody had his back and stuck with him. And I think that's a lost art today. I think we change coaches and change quarterbacks like we change shirts. And I think uh that lesson he taught me was really, really important.

11:55 Believe in your quarterback, get behind him, and make the guy successful.

11:59 Yeah, legendary guy. Another legendary guy you were around, Al Davis, right? I mean, I I remember when I played, he'd come out in a sweat. I played against him, I never played for him. Sweatsuit with the glasses, the hair back, the whole just a presence to the guy. And I remember working for you, you told some stories about Al Davis.

12:16 I was always like, wow, that's cool. What was some of the you know your best Al Davis stuff? You have any story that you uh thing that he taught you that you you still use or remember?

12:25 What are you looking at, Pine? You know, he would come in, what are you looking at? What are you grinning at, grooded? Um, you know, he's the one guy that I have met in my lifetime that could walk into your office and draw the punt protection and ask me, what the hell is going on with our left guard here?

12:44 What was the call? And I really didn't know what the call of the left guard was because I was so enamored with quarterbacks and offensive football, he knew how to draw the punt protection. He knew defenses and more than anything, he knew personnel. He would ask you, hey Pine, who's the third corner for the Chargers?

13:05 And you better know it's Terrence Shaw, and you better know he came from San Jose State because he was really into matchup football. If our best receiver, Tim Brown, can't beat their best corner, then get him against their third corner, you know, and get a second receiver against their second corner, or get the tight end over there against the safety.

13:25 Phenomenal. Now he was hard. He beat me up. I took a lot of blows, man, but he made me better. He made me mentally tougher. He educated me, he taught me how to study. Every week, at the end of the week, coaches get out of the building. You want to take your wife out for dinner? There'd be a stack of baitic tapes on my desk.

13:44 I said, What the hell are these? He said, These are trend reels. So I started making trend reels after working for Al Davis. A trend reel was all the plus 20 passes in the league the week before, all the sacks, all the red zone touchdown passes, all the blitzes that got home unblocked. He wanted you to see that, and maybe it would stimulate an idea.

14:08 We would put one of those plays in to get the same result. But it was awesome. And uh unfortunately it didn't last very long, but there's a big reason why Al Davis has a lot of rings and a lot of respect amongst football people.

14:24 Yeah, he's a legend. He's a legend. And I remember, coach, one thing popped in my head working for you. You were a head coach, you did all your own cut-ups too, which people watching may understand what that is. You had your old beta camera film equipment in your office. I'd go in your office at five in the morning, hand you something, you'd be in there doing something.

14:42 And you had those tapes there, and you were popping those things in and out, making your old cut-ups. You were great at making those tapes, to your point, like how it motivated the team. Like, it's one thing, like in business, whatever. If I can tell you something, okay, but if I can show you it being done or how it's being done and being done by other people, like I'm a player, you're challenging me.

15:02 Hey, this guy's doing it this look at him do this, and you're telling me, hey, do it this way. But you know, you you were amazing with those tapes. I guess now with digital and electronic and all that stuff, is it it's changed. But I mean, what how did you you taught yourself to do that? And that that was a powerful part of your presentation, right?

15:18 Well, I always believed my philosophy was preparation and presentation. They gotta go hand in hand. I know a lot of coaches that did extensive preparation and would go down there and present the game plan and they couldn't explain it properly, or they put the players to sleep, or they confused them. Then I was around some coaches who didn't prepare properly that would go down there with this PowerPoint presentation.

15:41 That doesn't work either. I think you got to do extensive preparation and really come up with a game plan that you know is exciting. And we can't wait to go out there and put it together. But when you go down there with these players, I think you got to knock their socks off and show them why it's gonna work and get them excited about it.

16:01 Even if you have to use some analogies in there, uh a little creativity. You should see some of my cut-ups now. The problem is I can't afford the rights to show it to very many people. So you got to come to my office here in Tampa uh to see them, but I still make a million tapes, a million cut-ups, and you try to make your point, but you gotta have the preparation with the presentation to really get it to sink in, I think.

16:28 Yeah, no one was better at it. I mean I sat in a lot of meetings with guys with the ohms and this and that. You'd be like, man, what but you you're to your point, you're selling it, the preparation, the presentation. It's everything. Like in business and sales, same thing. I go out and present things to people.

16:41 I I have to have that same juice to you because who's gonna buy from me if I don't have juice, right? If I'm not there, hey, excited about what I'm selling you, versus, hey, this is what it does. This so amazing stuff. It was always great to watch you do that. Coach, quarterbacks, you're no there's not a better quarterback guru in the in in the world than you.

17:00 You have your shows, your things. I see it every year. I have a son that's a quarterback, and we watch you and stuff, just the passion stuff, and you know, you know quarterbacks, just as you said, your dad taught you become an expert at the quarterback position, and and you are, right? So, and I I saw one of your old uh podcasts not too long ago.

17:15 I loved it. You said quarterback's not evolving, it's dissolving, right? I mean, I I agree with you. I it's I call it the world's again, all these run-around quarterbacks. Everyone's running around. All my years of playing football as an offensive lineman was always protect a quarterback. We don't want him getting hit.

17:32 If his jersey's dirty, his pants are dirty, it looks bad on us. Today, though, they they're running quarterbacks 20, 10, 15 times a game as a running back. You know, in the NFL, you remember this. Running backs don't last long. There's not a trend in those tires. Now you want a quarterback to throw and run.

17:48 I mean, you're seeing quarterbacks drop everywhere. I am, at least. At some point, what what has to happen? These owners paying these guys $100 million a year, you're gonna say, hey, wait a minute. We're paying that guy a lot of money. You're running him down, he's getting hurt. What has to happen? But again, I'm saying it to you.

18:04 What what are your thoughts on all that, Coach?

18:06 Oh, I I agree with you. I think the quarterback is the only guy on your football team that can't play with a sore right elbow, a sore shoulder, or Baker Mayfield's got his thumb knocked out of socket. The guy can't play. He's worthless, he can't throw. But, you know, where football is now, let's be honest, it's a shotgun, no huddle, no snap count, clap it and go offense.

18:29 The route trees for receivers, I study receivers. Jerry Rice's route tree was so vast, I don't have time to even start with the routes he ran. But if you take the quick screens, the bubble screens, the hitches, and the flies out of football, some receivers don't have any routes. You rarely see double moves, you rarely see some of the routes that we grew up seeing.

18:55 And you rarely see a quarterback take a five-step drop in the pocket ever. So if you compound that with the offensive lines training, because everybody's in seven-on-seven, the problem is all the linemen they're not even playing football anymore. So we're way behind with offensive line play, and it's affected how we structure game plans and the lack of practice time and padded practices.

19:21 Most of the passes you see nowadays are RPOs. They're running plays with built-in passes. And if you take those out of football, there's some high schools and colleges that don't have any plays. Uh so I think that's kind of where the game is. I think defenses are catching up a little bit, and it'll be interesting to see how the offenses counter it.

19:41 But I still try to teach the old school rhythm drops, 3-5-7, reverse six, reverse eight, uh, changing the launching spot, boot legs, all that good stuff. And the really good offenses, Jim, are going back to underneath the center. If you ask the Seahawks, if you ask the Rams, if you ask Jared Goff about his play action package, you'll see where he is.

20:05 He's under the center. They have a lot of sting. Right, right.

20:08 No, no, no question. I mean, again, uh, I my knowledge is my, I've seen it through my son. You know, these not him, but like no one's evaluating these guys mentally, too. How smart they are. How much they you coach, I mean, this the offense you put in, the verbiage you put in. A quarterback had to be a sharp guy, right?

20:25 Today they got the wristband, they got a signal, whatever, and they're just doing a couple things, a clap, but the guy's just riding the thing looking. Okay, if one guy goes here, he's you either hand it or throw it, right? There's no reason. Now you get up to the NFL high-level college, you know, these guys got to stand in a third down, read a defense.

20:42 What's the safeties doing? What's going on? But none of that's happening, right? I to me it's an epidemic. I and it's it's it's it's great to hear that some teams are doing under center and going back to that. I I think that needs to happen because you know, you've got to protect the quarterback. This isn't sustainable the way it's going.

20:58 I feel like these coaches call the play because they're like, hey, if if my my run pass doesn't work, then he'll just run run for it and I'll get a positive view and I'll look good. We'll move the chains, right? I mean, what are your thoughts?

21:09 I think you got to ask yourself if Peyton Manning and Tom Brady and Drew Brees came back today as seniors in high school, where would they play? What offense in the country services a drop back passer? That's a great question. I know some young guys that are drop back passers that are asking me, where the hell should I go?

21:28 You know, I don't want to carry the ball on the power read. I don't want to run the zone read and run around the end. I want to drop back and throw the damn ball. So I think those are those are some interesting things. But I went to a college game and I like to watch the operation, the communication from the coach to the quarterback.

21:45 And in college football now, we're using the walkie talkie. So I can say, Hey, Jim, Jim, Jim, let's go trip straight. Let's go 76 dusty, X out, alert 358 cannon. I can tell you all these things. And I said, Use a hard count and tell Bobby to check two by two on the on a slow flat. Well, I'm watching the college games.

22:05 No one's using the mechanism. They got four coaches over there wearing different shirts, dummy signaling, and everybody's still looking to the sidelines. So I just want the communication to get better, to get, I don't know, more extensive. I want to get the quarterbacks to do more at the line of scrimmage, recognizing defenses, communicating, hey, we're good, or let's fix this, let's change the play, and it'll lead to higher levels of execution.

22:34 And if I see one more false start, Jim, I'm gonna go stick my hand in a card door and shut it. You know, there's too many pre-snap penalties, high school, college, and pro, and I encourage every fan to get ticked off when they see one this weekend.

22:52 I love it. I love it. You talk about O line, Bill Muir. We all work together, Bill Old Grinder and stuff. I mean, the O-line today, it's step to the side, just just step sideways, lateral. No one's coming off the ball, hitting people, driving, moving men different ways. Offensive line when we're supposed to be bigger, stronger, we're slower, not as fast as the guys in front of us, but we want to get two bodies pushing, moving people this way, that way, creating a hole.

23:17 I don't see that anymore. It's it's again, it's all the sideways reads, could be a run, could be a pass, and really softens up the old lines. And that's they've taken the fullback out of football, too. That's not even a position that exists anymore, right? So it's it's uh it's unbelievable, coach. But one thing I ask everybody on this thing is adversity, coach, right?

23:34 We all face adversity in our life. I face it in the past, it's coming whether we want it or not. How does John Gruden face adversity?

23:42 You know, I think obviously you want to eliminate as much adversity and misery as possible. But I always try to believe that that's the case in your life where you get a chance to show what you're made of. You have to showcase your mental toughness at some point in your life. You're sitting in traffic, you know, instead of losing your mind, you know, you you have to showcase some mental toughness.

24:07 Uh but my mom passed away, I had my hip replaced, I lost my job. You know, adversity will hit. And you can go in the tank, you can go sit at a bar drinking your sorrows away, or you can reinvent yourself and you can rely on your circle. And I encourage everybody to tighten their circle, have some people that you believe in, trust the guy upstairs, stay positive, life's too short, and good things will come.

24:35 But I think when you do get in a situation where it's miserable, it's hot, you're tired, you're beat up, you're ticked off, if you can make those days your best days, you can be great. You can be a difference maker. And I think that's really important. I try to tell our teams that. That doesn't mean I want to be behind 17 to nothing, sweat my ass off in the locker room at halftime.

24:55 But it does give us an opportunity to go out there and show people what we really are made of. And you got to embrace those situations. And um, you see it with the Arizona Cardinals on a four-game winning streak. They go on the road, no way they're gonna beat the Rams. They knocked their Rams, they gave them two black guys.

25:15 But I think that was a great showcase of mental toughness and how to handle adversity. But we all got it. It's just gonna hit us in different shapes and forms, and some of it is over the top, hard to deal with, but try to be at your best in those situations. Trust the guy upstairs and lean on your circle, and good things can happen.

25:34 That's right. No, I love it. Well said. Then another word we talk about is transition. You know, you've coached a lot of players, coaches, you know, you've had a lot of guys transition to head jobs, different things. But a player uh or anybody in business transitioning from one thing to the next. You said reinvent yourself.

25:50 I think that's key too. But any advice for guys transitioning, I always tell guys, get busy, do something. If you don't know what you want to do, figure out what you do what you want to do by doing things, right? But what do you how would you advise a guy in transition what to do?

26:04 You know what? I would just say chase your passion. You know, the big thing is what do you want to do? You know, Jim? What do you want to do? You you've transitioned in your life three or four times. But when you go after it, go get it, you know, and dig your cleats in and take your cuts. You know, get around people that can help you learn.

26:26 I was always taught about the accumulation of knowledge theory every day. You better get up five or six minutes earlier, go to bed five or six minutes later. That accumulation of work, that accumulation of knowledge is gonna become a powerful thing. And if you think about it, so is the accumulation of nothing.

26:44 But you gotta chase your passion, you gotta really work hard to get yourself a little bit better every day, and you'll be shocked at what will happen. But I think a lot of us, you know, we're still figuring out what we want to do, and we waste a lot of time getting, I don't know, different nibbles and different things, and we never truly get better at the thing we really want to do.

27:06 And that's my thing for everybody is try to find the thing that you want and dig your cleats in and go get it.

27:14 I love it. Love it. That's good stuff. And then one other thing too, coach, best I ask people, the little nuggets, best advice you might have ever got could be from your dad, a coach, watching somebody, whatever. But it could be pieces of advice. What's some of the best of it? You've already given some of it, but what's the best advice you would give people?

27:31 Well, loyalty and hard work are the two most important things you can offer somebody. You know, you don't take a job and go in there with all the answers and you try to replace the guy that you're talking to. You go in there and work your butt off, you lead the team in effort, and uh you try to be as loyal as you can to that organization.

27:51 And uh your work ethic is is everything. And uh I think that'll that'll summarize who you are if you can bring those two things. I always talk about the four E's. I learned this at Dayton, you know, I was a road scholar. You gotta have effort, you gotta be able to execute, you gotta have enthusiasm, and you gotta have intensity.

28:13 You gotta really want to compete. You know what I mean? And we all know intensity doesn't start with an E, but um, I thought it did for several years while I was in college. But I I have those four E's at the forefront of everything I try to do in terms of football. And um, if you lose one of those four E's, you're gonna get your butt kicked.

28:35 You'll be gone.

28:37 Absolutely, absolutely. I love that. I love that. And then, coach, one of the last things, you know, when it's all said and done 20, 30 years from now, you got three great kids, you got a great wife, you've built a great life. You like you said, you've done done so many things. When your name comes up down the road, what John Gruden, what do you what do you hope people say?

28:55 Well, you know, I hope they say he he uh he wasn't uh as bad a guy as as we heard he was, you know. I I just uh I hope they uh if you came in contact with me, I hope you had a good time and I hope I hope they recognize I worked hard at it.

29:12 Yeah, no question. Oh, you're the best, Coach. You're the best. I love you. Love you too, man. I appreciate you. He's been helpful, my son, who's a quarterback.

29:20 Yeah, your son's pretty good. All those people out there that are listening. I don't know if he's gonna be one of these zone read guys either, but if you want to drop back and rip it, come down to Tampa, Florida, and check this kid out, man. This guy is a hell of a talent.

29:36 I appreciate that. You've been very helpful, advising him, Michael. So he's got a big career, hopefully ahead of him. He's a good kid, smart, doing it the right way, humble. You know, I I raised him as a as a lineman, and uh he's got he's got a chance, so we're looking for good things. And uh, you know, appreciate you came out to his school and meant a lot to the guys and stuff.

29:53 And uh so good stuff. Appreciate your relationship, appreciate the time, and good luck. You do an amazing job with everything you do, and uh we'll we'll talk soon. But thanks for coming on the show, maybe have you on again sometime.

30:03 Well, I love it. Thanks for having me, Jim. Your podcast is uh one of the hottest things I've seen out there on SoundCloud, man.

30:10 Love it, love it. I learned from I'm trying to be you, Coach. You said you set them far for the city.

30:20 Love you, man.

30:21 See you, coach. Love you too. Thank you. See ya.

30:24 Thank you. See you, Jimmy.