Raiders coach Jon Gruden hasn’t flat-out said it yet, but the message has been received loud and clear: he hates the preseason.
Clearly, his stance is that the four-game exhibition season is an unnecessary burden that carries far more risk than reward. You can’t draw any other conclusion from how he’s coached his team this August.
I asked Gruden after the Raiders’ soul-crushingly boring and uninformative third preseason game Friday if he thought four preseason games are too many. He declined to comment, but did get in a jab: “I think that was an eight-hour game, I am tired.