When a team experiences the kind of once-in-a-generation success that the Kansas City Chiefs have experienced, the organization has to pull out all the stops to ensure that the winning continues for as long as possible. As the Chiefs continue preparing for the 2024 NFL season and a shot at their third Super Bowl title in as many years, Kansas City head coach Andy Reid is taking an unusual approach to staying ahead of the curve.
Among the Chiefs’ training camp invitees this summer is a former AFC West rival coach who has effectively been exiled from the NFL’s ranks following the public disclosure of racist and homophobic emails that he had sent to a league executive. That coach is Jon Gruden — and he has Patrick Mahomes’ approval, as well as Reid’s, to be around a team that is chasing NFL history in 2024.
How Gruden is helping the Chiefs
Gruden has been observing the Chiefs’ workouts this month as training camp nears its end and the preseason begins. The former head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hasn’t worked in an official capacity in the NFL since he resigned from the Raiders job in 2021, amidst the spiraling email scandal.>
Reid has explained to reporters that Gruden’s love and passion for the game of football — as well as a relationship dating back three decades — prompted his invitation to training camp as an unofficial “consultant.” Mahomes is also on board with Gruden’s presence at camp, and does not feel that the controversial coach is a distraction in any way as the Chiefs pursue an NFL first — a Super Bowl “threepeat.”
Mahomes told the media that as a “football historian,” having Gruden’s input and hearing his stories as a Super Bowl-winning coach of the Buccaneers has made for an exciting addition to training camp — even if the rest of the NFL shuns Gruden, who now primarily advises the Milano Seamen of the European League of Football.
