Raiders Owner Mark Davis Part III: Jon Gruden

As we continue our look at Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis, today we look at his relationship with Jon Gruden.

We’re continuing our series, looking at Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis. Today we look at Mark’s rehiring of Jon Gruden.

Recently, I wrote a series on the life and legacy of Raider legend Al Davis. But since 2011, Davis’ son, Mark Davis, has taken majority control over the franchise.

In this mini-series, we’ll look at what Mark Davis has done thus far in his career.

Mark Davis & Jon Gruden

As the owner of a $3-billion franchise, Mark Davis has to make business decisions relevant to his team and, ultimately, bring wins to a franchise his father developed from the ground up.

We’ve talked about how Mark is different from Al, and we’ve talked about Mark’s business strategy by using the public's underestimation to his advantage. So how does he take the two and make his business decisions?

Let’s take a brief moment and look at the current head coach of the Raiders, Jon Gruden, who is on his second tenure as the head coach. His first tenure happened between 1998 and 2001, where Gruden took a 4-12 team to a team capable of going to the playoffs twice.

Of course, for Al Davis at the time, that wasn’t enough. But Al didn’t fire him. He traded him for two first-round picks, two second-round picks and $8 million to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Gruden won the Super Bowl the season after with the Bucs, beating the Oakland Raiders, 48-21.

Perhaps knowing this and with head coach Jack Del Rio’s horrible 4-12 season in 2018, Mark brought back Gruden to the Raiders from the broadcast booth and signed him to a 10-year, $100 million deal.

So why in the world did Mark do this?

Well, let’s think about this for a brief moment.

Since Mark took ownership in 2011, the single winning season he had was in 2016, with a 12-4 run to the Wild Card game.

That’s it.

Mark knew Gruden wanted to come back. Mark knew Gruden could win.

Mark knew Gruden was a Raider at heart.

Mark Davis did what his father would never do because well, as we established already, Mark and Al are entirely different people.

With a consistent long-term coach comes a consistent scheme, trust from your players who signed long-term deals with the Raiders.

Time to build a relationship from the ground up.

But with that came another issue. Coaches only work as well as the relationship between the general manager and themselves.

Which speaking of, after a 4-12 season during Gruden’s return, Mark fired General Manager Reggie McKenzie and brought in former NFL defensive back Mike Maycock in 2019, who served nearly two decades as an analyst for NFL Network.

Right move, I’ll say as the Raiders went 7-9 last season, going 6-4 before stumbling to a 1-5 finish.

Sure, for Al, he kept coaches long term like Hall-of-Famer John Madden, Art Shell, and a guy who deserves to be in the hall of fame, Tom Flores.

But Al never brought back someone from the past.

Mark knew his team had to rebuild. He knew he needed a Raider. He knew he needed a coach who can handle a relocation.

There was only one guy from the beginning for Mark. It couldn’t be just anyone who could be a Raider.  No, it had to someone who already was a Raider.

Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

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