PHOENIX — Jay Gruden isn’t worried.
He spent his Tuesday afternoon on the golf course, hitting the links with Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Dirk Koetter for an informal tourney among the NFL’s head coaches. When he sat down for his scheduled media availability Tuesday evening, he was tan and smiling, cracking jokes left and right. And really, truly, he said, he doesn’t know what all this fuss about his team going down the tubes is about.
“I don’t know why everybody is so doom and gloom around here,” Gruden said. “We’re excited.”
Most of the reasoning behind any doomsday projections has something to do with the firing of Scot McCloughan, the team’s former general manager, amid anonymous accusations of alcohol abuse.