Washington Redskins Coach Jay Gruden leaves the field after the team's loss to the New England Patriots Sunday at FedEx Field. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Washington Redskins Coach Jay Gruden has been fired after the team’s 0-5 start to the season.
Gruden was summoned to the team’s facility in Ashburn for a 5 a.m. meeting Monday by owner Daniel Snyder and team president Bruce Allen, who informed him of the decision.
Bill Callahan, previously the team’s offensive line and assistant head coach, will take over as interim head coach, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
The team is holding a news conference with Allen at 1 p.m. Monday.
Gruden had been the longest-tenured Redskins head coach in the two decades that Daniel Snyder has owned the franchise, but his 35-49-1 record in a little more than five seasons and the team’s inability to make the playoffs more than one time ultimately cost him his job.
His fate was sealed by an 0-5 start to this season, with Sunday’s 33-7 loss to the New England Patriots being the final blow.
Gruden, who knew once he received word late Sunday night of the early Monday meeting that it was almost certainly to discuss his being fired, arrived at the facility to find Snyder and Allen already there. After they informed him that he was being terminated, Gruden thanked them for the opportunity and left.
[Awful on field and directionless off, Redskins need to face a hard reality]
Though Snyder had been more appreciative of Gruden than many of his other head coaches, the team’s owner has been described as increasingly frustrated over Gruden’s inability to get back to the playoffs after winning the NFC East in 2015. Snyder decided to keep Gruden in January after the team finished 7-9 for a second straight season, but told associates he would make a change if Washington lost four games early in the season.
“Dan’s just fed up,” a person familiar with Snyder’s thinking said this summer.
Snyder chose not to fire Gruden after a Week 4 road loss to the New York Giants, but decided to make the move coming out of the Patriots loss and ahead of a road matchup with the winless Miami Dolphins. Snyder and Allen left FedEx Field almost immediately after the loss to New England Sunday.
The team released the following statement Monday morning in announcing Gruden’s firing: “Through the first five games of the 2019 season, the team has clearly not performed up to expectations, and we all share in that responsibility. Moving forward we are committed to doing all that we can collectively as an organization to turn things around and give our Redskins fans and alumni a team they can be proud of in 2019 and beyond.”
In the locker room after Sunday’s defeat, Washington running back Adrian Peterson expressed frustration over the team’s performance.
“It’s clear that something has to change,” Peterson said. “That’s one thing you do know, because we are 0-5. We haven’t won. We haven’t been productive as an offense. You got to go back to the drawing board and say, ‘Okay, as a coaching staff . . . what can we do better to put our players in better position to be productive as an offense, to be better as a defense?’ It’s their job to do that. We 0-5. What we’ve been doing, obviously, isn’t working.”
Callahan, who has been with Washington since 2015, also has previous experience working with Allen with the Oakland Raiders, where Callahan was the offensive coordinator and later the head coach and Allen was a senior executive. Callahan also served as the head coach at the University of Nebraska for four seasons before successful stints at offensive line coaches for the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys.
Gruden, who had been an offensive assistant for his brother Jon with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and later the offensive coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals, was seen as one of the league’s brightest offensive minds when Snyder hired him in 2014. Early on, his offenses did well, especially late in the 2015 season when quarterback Kirk Cousins led a late-season run to the division title and in 2016 when Washington had the third-most yards in the NFL.
But his teams often had defensive breakdowns. He had three defensive coordinators in less than six years and while the defense was supposed to be the strength of the team the last two seasons, Washington struggled to make key stops late in games.
[Even Tom Brady thought it was ‘ridiculous’ how many Patriots fans were at FedEx Field]
Mostly, though, his teams were damaged by critical injuries, none more devastating than quarterback Alex Smith’s likely career-ending broken leg in November 2018. At the time the Redskins were 6-3 and seemed headed to the playoffs. But then Houston’s J.J. Watt landed on Smith, causing the quarterback’s leg to snap — an injury that ultimately required several surgeries to remove infections.
Two games after Smith went down, backup quarterback Colt McCoy broke his leg as well, and Gruden had to finish the season with two quarterbacks who had been out of football. Washington finished the season 1-6 and is 1-10 after Smith’s injury.
But there were other injuries as well, often depriving Gruden of key players. His best playmaker on offense, tight end Jordan Reed, has missed large parts of several seasons with a variety of injuries including seven concussions, the last of which kept him out all of this year. Running back Derrius Guice, drafted in 2017 to be a key piece of the Redskins offense, tore his ACL in his first preseason game a year ago and injured his meniscus in this year’s season opener. Linebacker Reuben Foster, expected to be a key part of this year’s defense, was injured on the first play of offseason practices and was lost for the year.
The Redskins finished the last two seasons with 23 players on injured reserve and already have 10 on this year’s list.
Two disputes between team executives and top players likely hurt the Redskins’ performance during Gruden’s tenure. Washington used the franchise tag on quarterback Kirk Cousins for two straight years, angering Cousins, who eventually left in free agency after the 2017 season to join the Minnesota Vikings. Seven-time Pro Bowl left tackle Trent Williams has held out all of this year, so far refusing to play for the team, because of frustration with its medical staff.
Gruden has generally shrugged at the things that have gone wrong, and many around the team say his even-tempered personality kept the team from collapsing.
“I mean, there’s worse things to do in life than coach a football team,” Gruden said recently. “I enjoy coaching, love coaching, like the players and I like the staff that we have and I hate losing. [I’m] miserable losing, because you put so much time and effort into it and players are working hard, but at the end of the day once you lose the game you got to refocus and get your mind right and get ready for the next one.”
The coach had taken a slightly more resigned tone following the loss to New England, saying: “If the key works on Monday, I’ll keep working.”
Gruden is Snyder’s eighth coach in 20 seasons and the seventh to be fired. In addition to being Snyder’s longest-tenured coach, he is also the only one to get a contract extension, having two years added to his five-year, $20 million deal in 2017 — two years before his original contract expired. He was only five games into that extension when he was fired.
Kareem Copeland contributed to this report.
Read more on the NFL:
Three takeaways from the Redskins’ 33-7 loss to Patriots
Patriots’ offense ‘can be a lot better,’ Tom Brady says after big win over Redskins
Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph knocked out, hospitalized after
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/10/07/redskins-fire-coach-jay-gruden-after-start/
2019-10-07 11:47:00Z
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