Gruden, Assistants Still Can't Meet
by Tom LaMarre
The NFL is allowing coaches to return to their headquarters on Friday, but Coach Jon Gruden of the Las Vegas Raiders and his assistants probably will be forced to continue to meet virtually, as they have since the shutdown because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
That’s because the Raiders’ new 335,00-square-foot headquarters facility in Henderson, Nev., is not quite ready to be occupied and probably won’t be until later this month.
“It’s hard to do,” Gruden told J.T. The Brick in a radio interview last month. “It’s challenging. We’ve got to try to be as creative as possible and that’s what we’re doing. We probably spend more time preparing for the meetings than we’ve ever done before. We’ve learned a lot about technology, we feel like we’re on the cutting edge of utilizing it.
“ … You can’t see everybody while you’re talking. You’re speaking in the dark, really. It’s hard to get 95, 100 people on one Zoom call. So what we’ve tried to do is have some brief team meetings, some brief offensive/defensive meetings and spend most of our time in small groups. Tight ends are with the tight end coach, quarterbacks are with the quarterback coach and defensive players are with their coaches as well, individually.”
Moving trucks began arriving Monday at the Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center, the new headquarters, from the previous facility in Alameda—not far from where the Raiders played until last season.
The Raiders began moving out of California last month and will not return as originally planned for training camp at the Napa Marriott and Redwood Middle School in Napa, Calif., where they have conducted it since 1996.
That’s because the NFL has advised all 32 of its teams to hold training camp in their main headquarters to avoid travel because of the virus.
The Raiders had hoped to hold a minicamp this month at their new headquarters, but now the entire team will not be together until training camp in Henderson late in July. By that time, all 300 of the team’s employees should be moved in.
“The plan is flexible to allow future occupancy based on local guidelines and NFL guidelines,” Raiders president Marc Badain said earlier this week.
The new headquarters will include three outdoor fields, 1½ indoor fields, executive offices, weight room, rehabilitation center, cafe, retail store and a TV studio. The total cost of the facility is more than $75 million.
