Jack Gruden, coach’s son, on Redskins staff

RICHMOND — His surname is famous, but certain assumptions must be avoided when getting to know Jack Gruden.

The first sport he picked up as a boy, and the one he played the longest in high school, was basketball, not football.

His future ambitions lie not on a sideline or broadcast booth, but in a front office.

But if you assumed Gruden would be great at playing the “Madden NFL” video game franchise, well, that’s exactly right. So good, in fact, that he has been “whooping” Washington Redskins players at the game during training camp.

“They all come in. They hear I’m the best so they all try to get at me,” Gruden said.

The youngest son of the Redskins coach, Gruden is not here just to play games. He’s in the midst of his first season as a full-time assistant in the team’s video department, filming and breaking down the practices his father is running.

At 21, Gruden is one of the guys around the Redskins’ younger players. Gruden said he has beaten Derrius Guice, Rob Kelley, Jonathan Allen and Quinton Dunbar at Madden this summer — to name a few.

They play at the team hotel after practice (PlayStation 4 over Xbox One). Gruden is versatile enough to win with a number of teams. For each game, he has the CPU select three random teams and picks one of the three to play as.

But he never picks the Redskins.

“I try to stay away from us because I’ll be yelling at the (Redskins) players too much at the game,” Gruden said.

Kelley thinks Gruden’s Madden skills come from having played quarterback, and having a coach and former quarterback for a father.

“I think Jack has a little advantage because his dad’s a play-caller,” Kelley said. “Jack’s in the game for real. If it’s like he’s got two minutes and two timeouts, he’s not trying to throw the ball out of bounds. He’s throwing it in the middle of the field and calling timeout.”

Kelley joked that he didn’t want to give Gruden “too much credit.”

“I think he takes it a little more serious than the other guys, but I like that,” he said.

Gruden played quarterback in high school for two years, but when his family moved to Virginia, he began attending Middleburg Academy, a small school with no football program. So he focused on basketball, where shooting was his main strength.

The Grudens do love their basketball — Jay Gruden’s middle son, Joey, walked on to the University of Dayton team. And they were a competitive household when Jack was growing up, he said, whether it was video games or sports in the backyard.

After a year at Florida Atlantic University, Jack Gruden went to work for his uncle, Super Bowl-winning coach Jon Gruden, while he was part of ESPN’s coverage of the NFL Draft and “Monday Night Football.”

“(I would) go in at 6 a.m. and he would give me a list of players,” Jack Gruden said. “Like if the Steelers were to play the Redskins on Monday night, I’d start on the Monday before and start breaking down tape on each guy he wanted so he could talk about them on Monday night.”

Jon Gruden left ESPN to begin a second stint coaching the Oakland Raiders earlier this year. When that happened, Jay Gruden gave his son a call.

“My dad called me and said that there was a job opening here for me,” Jack Gruden said. “It was a no-brainer.”

His job on the Redskins’ six-person video staff entails much of the same work he did at ESPN. At Bon Secours Washington Redskins Training Facility here in Richmond, he is based in one of the several tents behind the near end zone. Gruden films practice and edits down the footage.

“I push it out to the coaches so they can watch it,” he said. “I go in and type out the plays and the players and who got the reps.”

There’s plenty of precedent in both broadcasting and coaching for following in the footsteps of older family members. But the younger Gruden says if he stays in football, he’d like to chart a different course than his father and uncle.  

“I like the general managing side,” Gruden said. “I like trying to find the late-round guy who can make the team better.”

In his expert opinion, Gruden believes fans should watch for wide receiver Josh Doctson to have a breakout year — if he can stay healthy, that is.

Gruden’s resemblance to his father means he cannot escape notice around the team. Although his hair is darker than Jay and Jon Gruden’s recognizable shade of blonde, and he is growing out a beard, he has the Gruden face and Jon’s green eyes.

Being the coach’s son can come with other trials, too. Gruden has to tune out the chatter on whether his dad is on “the hot seat” after only one playoff appearance in four seasons.

But Jay Gruden said his son is working “extremely hard” for the team on film breakdown and scouting.

“I don’t see a whole lot of him,” the coach said. Then he cracked, “Except when he wants money.”