One of the smartest things ESPN ever did was bring John Gruden on board.  I don’t know how many people caught it last night, but he did an hour long special with the 4 “major” QBs in the draft this year.  This wasn’t just some fluff piece either, like so many of the shows on ESPN are.  This was a guy who was genuinely concerned with the success of these young signal callers.  There was no telling these guys how great they are.  They was no smoke being blown up anyone’s ass.  This show was about what these guys did wrong, and how they get better and learn from their mistakes.

There may not be a more prepared, from a mental aspect, QB in this year’s NFL draft than Timtebow.  There wasn’t anything Gruden said to him that Tebow didn’t have the right answer for.  Nothing.  Look, take it from somebody who had the Tebowmance shoved down his throat by Gary Danielson and Vern Lundquist every Saturday, this kid is ready to play football and he’s ready to do it for his team first and himself second.  I can respect that.

Watching the show made it obvious this guy has put in the work to play in the NFL.  Will his new skill set and mechanics translate to the NFL?  That remains to be seen.  What a thrill it must have been for those kids at Carrollwood Day School to be standing on the same field as Gruden and Tebow, let alone catching passes.

Perhaps the most criticism was directed at Jimmy Clausen.  And it was well deserved.  And you could tell he had the young Clausen’s full attention.  Clausen comes from a family of QBs.  He’s been around it his whole life.  It would have been easy for him to blow him off.   Gruden challenged him in every aspect of the game, but was most critical of how he handled the offense before the ball was even snapped.  He pointed to the Michigan game last year when Clausen took 4 timeouts and 1 delay of game because he couldn’t get the play into the huddle.  He challenged him to work on that aspect from the second he set foot in an NFL training camp.

Colt McCoy is a quaterback’s quaterback.  He could talk football 25 hours of the day.  He challenged McCoy to be the next Drew Brees.  While that’s certainly a tall task, you could tell Gruden saw that type of player in McCoy.  He was critical of McCoy’s dependance on Jordan Shipley, yet praised his ability to read plays and coverages.

Watching the Sam Bradford portion of the show brought to mind an excellent analogy.  There’s a scene in Bull Durham when the wise veteran Crash Davis baits the young Nuke LaLoosh into throwing a punch at him.  Of course Nuke obliges Crash with a left hand.  Instead of getting up and dropping him with a shot to face, he praises him by saying “when you get in a fight with a drunk you don’t hit him with your pitching hand.”  The lesson to Bradford was the same.  Learn to take a hit and protect your throwing shoulder at all costs.  We were then shown the two clips of Bradford getting buried on his right shoulder.  To add to that, Gruden challenged him to get better from a physical standpoint.  Even when Bradford executed a perfect play action on a go route, hitting his WR is stride for six, Gruden challenged him to get his head around faster.

My esteemed colleague [sharkey] pointed out, to which I quickly agreed, it’s hard to believe there’s 32 coaches in the NFL better than Gruden.  It’s hard to believe that the guy who took two teams to the Super Bowl in one year (don’t tell me that Raiders squad was more about Bill Callahan), made a Pro Bowl QB out of Rich Gannon and won a ring with Brad freaking Johnson, doesn’t have a job.  It’s hard to believe that a team in a position to take one of these 4 guys in the draft didn’t throw enough money at him to get him on their sideline.

There isn’t a QB in the league who wouldn’t benefit from a day with the man affectionately known as Chucky.  It’s clear these guys are better for their time with Gruden.  Over the next few years we get to see what they learned.