Jon Gruden has been out of an NFL building since 2021, but he's never really left football. Now he's stepping into a booth in a role he's never actually held: play-by-play. Gruden is set to call the Buccaneers' preseason game against the Chiefs on August 22, working alongside former Tampa Bay teammate Ronde Barber, according to multiple reports out of Tampa this month.
It's a genuine reinvention. Gruden spent 9 seasons as the color analyst on Monday Night Football from 2009 to 2017 before Las Vegas hired him away to coach the Raiders. He's spoken about wanting to flip the script and take the lead mic this time, reportedly telling reporters he'd been watching guys like Mike Tirico do it for years and wanted to give it a shot himself.
The news dropped the same week Gruden showed up on Pardon My Take, camped out at training camp and apparently bunking with Dave Portnoy in the process. Portnoy filmed a POV walk past Gruden's door at 6 a.m., and the footage is pure old-coach chaos — cap on the nightstand, stuff stacked everywhere.
Portnoy walks the camera past Gruden's room early in the morning, panning over a cap on the nightstand and a bed buried in stacked items.
Whatever the room looks like, Gruden's football brain clearly hasn't slowed down. He sat down for a full Pardon My Take episode covering training camp, the Kyler Murray to Vikings QB1 news, and the show's usual bits, and PFT Commenter and Big Cat both hyped the sit-down on their own feeds before the play-by-play news even broke.
Then came the actual headline. Pardon My Take posted separately that Gruden is getting back into the play-by-play game, tying together the podcast appearance and the broadcasting news into one story.
A podcast-style setup with camera and mic rolling while a man in a cap talks on a couch, posted alongside the news that Gruden is moving into play-by-play.
It's a low-stakes proving ground — a single preseason broadcast, not a national Monday night slot — but it's the kind of audition that could reset how networks think about using him. Gruden's a polarizing figure with plenty of baggage from how his Raiders tenure ended, but nobody's ever questioned how much he loves talking football. Now he just has to prove he can do it while also handling the score, the clock, and the snap count.