NAPA, Calif. -- It was early in training camp when the famously early-rising Jon Gruden told Derek Carr he would come wake him up if an idea, or a play, popped into his head. At any hour.
Sure, Carr was game.
So long as Gruden knocked on the quarterback's hotel room door first, and Carr was not rousted awake by the Oakland Raiders coach looming over him in bed.
“He always makes it uncomfortable for us,” Carr said of Gruden this offseason. “And now, playing a lot of football, it’s so uncomfortable in practice that when we get to the games, it’s going to be nice. ... He is trying to take it to another level of just making you uncomfortable, giving you the toughest looks. He wants you to throw the ball away. He doesn’t want everything to be perfect every day.”
Gruden has never had a quarterback like Carr; Carr has never had a coach like Gruden. And it is in this relationship, Gruden grinding on Carr to get his mental edge up, where the Raiders’ chances for an offensive resurgence reside.
After playing for Dennis Allen, Tony Sparano and Jack Del Rio, Carr is on his fourth head coach in five pro seasons, and Gruden, purported QB whisperer that he is, has never had a franchise-type quarterback in his prime.
Sure, Gruden groomed Rich Gannon into a future NFL MVP, but before going to Gruden and Oakland in 1999, Gannon was a journeyman.
“I think he had to convince Al Davis to sign me, because he already had Jeff George,” Gannon said. “He probably didn’t want some backup quarterback from Kansas City.
“It was refreshing. I needed someone to believe in me, and I just felt like Jon and I had a bond because we both had a lot to prove. We hit it off.”
Same song, new singer?
Gruden is trying to prove the game has not passed him by, while Carr and his five-year, $125 million extension has to prove last year’s regression was an aberration.
Look at this list of QBs to have started a regular-season game under center for Gruden since he coached his first NFL game in 1998: George, Donald Hollas, Wade Wilson, Gannon, Brad Johnson, Rob Johnson, Shaun King, Brian Griese, Chris Simms, Bruce Gradkowski, Tim Rattay, Jeff Garcia and Luke McCown.
Plus, of the four quarterbacks Gruden has drafted as a head coach -- Marques Tuiasosopo, Simms, Gradkowski and Josh Johnson -- only Simms started a game for him.
How hard can Gruden grind on his quarterback? Simms told a story to Pro Football Talk Live in May about cutting his honeymoon in Italy short by two days because Gruden kept calling him to talk football and ask when he was returning.
Waking up in camp with your coach standing over your bed and staring at you sounds preferable, no?
“That man has like 20 cups of coffee, I guess, because he has another level that he takes it to, and he hasn’t stopped yet,” Carr laughed.
The mental strain and, thus, improved mental edge, is what Gruden hopes to hone in on with Carr.
"If the coach doesn't screw [Derek Carr] up, we have a chance to have a heck of a quarterback." Jon Gruden
“I meet with him every morning,” Carr said. “He’ll say something to me in that meeting at 5:30 [a.m.], and then he won’t bring it up the rest of the day, and then he’ll throw it at me in practice. That’s after all the meetings, after all the conversations, after all of those things to make sure that I’m on top of the little things in the morning. He just continues to push me to get absolutely everything out of me.
“We have to be on the same page. We have to be thinking the same way, and he’s just training me to think like him, and it’s been real fun.”
Fun, you say? There’s a reason the narrative emerged that the deeply religious Carr would have a hard time taking to the hard-charging and decidedly old-school and sometimes foul-mouthed coaching style of Gruden.
“We’re very eerily similar. Obviously, just because they haven’t heard me say the F-word before, they just assume that I can’t handle hearing it,” said Carr.
Besides, Carr had tough coaches at Fresno State, too, in Pat Hill and position coach Dave Schramm. But he never had clashes like the epic sideline rows exhibited by Gannon and Gruden back in the day.
“I’ve never met anyone like him ...,” Gannon said of Gruden.
“I played 17 years and the best three years of my life were when I was with Jon. I saw him burn the candle on both ends. If they hadn’t gotten rid of Jon, we could have done something special for a number of years.”
Nearly two decades later, Gruden seems to have mellowed a bit, though “Chucky” did make an appearance in the Raiders’ exhibition opener Friday night. He was upset at a holding penalty that negated Marshawn Lynch’s 60-yard touchdown run three plays into the game.
Gruden’s ire, though, was aimed at the official who threw the flag, not at rookie left tackle Kolton Miller, who was called for the foul, or even his quarterback.
Oakland’s offensive starters played the one series, and it was definitely Flashback Friday at the Coliseum, with Carr directing Gruden’s version of the West Coast offense with dinks and dunks aplenty, power runs and a deep throw.
Carr completed two of his four passes for 11 yards (he just missed Martavis Bryant on the deep ball and Jordy Nelson on an intermediate shot), and getting him back to his form of 2016, when he finished tied for third in NFL MVP voting, is one of the reasons the Raiders doled out that 10-year, $100 million contract to Gruden.
And the way Gruden sees it, keeping Carr upright -- both physically and mentally, considering the QB has suffered broken bones in his pinkie finger, right leg and back since December 2016 -- is his mission. As well as pumping up Carr's confidence.
“If the coach doesn’t screw him up, we have a chance to have a heck of a quarterback,” Gruden said with a sly grin.
“But it all starts with No. 4. He is setting a real tone here, behind the scenes, in terms of his desire. I mean, he is working, man, he is working. He’s all business, he’s got a cannon and he understands what he’s doing, and there’s not a lot we can’t do, systematically, with him.”
And since Gannon took his last snap in the NFL, on Sept. 26, 2004, ironically against Gruden’s Buccaneers, the Raiders have started 18 different quarterbacks. Ready? Kerry Collins, Tuiasosopo, Aaron Brooks, Andrew Walter, Josh McCown, Daunte Culpepper, JaMarcus Russell, Gradkowski, Charlie Frye, Jason Campbell, Kyle Boller, Carson Palmer, Terrelle Pryor, Matt Flynn, Matt McGloin, Carr, Connor Cook and EJ Manuel.
Only Campbell had a winning record with Oakland, at 11-7.
Carr -- whose Total QBR fell from 54.6 to 47.2 last season, with his touchdown passes dropping from 28 to 22 and his interceptions rising from six to 13 -- is 28-34 after a brutal 0-10 start.
This narrative, with Gruden and Carr leading the way, is to right what once went wrong when Oakland cut Gruden loose after the 2001 season.
“This isn’t just him being a football coach,” Carr said. “I see our relationship being something that lasts beyond football. The football part is we have to go and we have to work hard and we have to focus on that, but ever since I met him, I just knew he’d be a friend, someone close, family, for life.
“I’m just trying to paint a picture of our relationship that I know how he feels about me. He’s told me over and over again. He’s showed me over and over again with his actions, so when he gets after me, I probably deserve it. Secondly, I love it because I know that all he wants to do is get the best out of me.”
Physically, and mentally.