Jon Gruden tried to explain the Raiders victory lap in Week 5 around Arrowhead to reporters on Monday.
Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden tried his best to offer up an explanation as to why the team took an extra victory lap around Arrowhead Stadium in Week 5 after beating the Kansas City Chiefs by a final score of 40-32. It made very little sense.
On Monday, a reporter asked Gruden about the victory lap, noting that Chiefs head coach Andy Reid brought it up a couple times in his own press conference to start the week. He asked, “What exactly was the victory lap and is that something that you think about this week as far as bulletin board material or anything like that?” Gruden responded with the following:
"Not really. You can find a smart aleck bus driver in Kansas City who made some snide comments when we got on the bus. Maybe that’s why we drove around the stadium was to tick him off. This is ridiculous. Next question."
So the driver of the bus drove around Arrowhead to show something to the driver of the bus? Or was it that the Raiders forced the bus driver to drive an extra lap around Arrowhead to prove something to him? In the first instance, it is just illogical. In the second instance, it means a bus driver got under Gruden’s skin. Apparently he’s still living rent-free in Gruden’s head. It also doesn’t jive with this:
Per one of my contacts. The Raiders requested the police escort allow them to “take a victory lap” around Arrowhead Stadium in the team buses before they headed up to the airport.
— Nick Jacobs (@Jacobs71) October 12, 2020
Here’s the likely truth: the Raiders were just as shocked as any of us when they pulled out the win over the Chiefs in Week 5 and wanted to celebrate. They deserved it. It was a good performance all the way around, and the Raiders played like the team that wanted it more. Then they drove around Arrowhead just to stick it to the home team. That was it.
Instead of passing it off on some unknown bus driver, Gruden should have just owned it for the sake of his team, because his excuse sounds lame. And it might not have justified it, but at least there’s something understandable about a coach who could say something like, “You know, the Chiefs have owned us for a while and it felt really good to get one over on this team. We look forward to trying again on Sunday.”
However, what we got instead was a silly response from Gruden saying the question was ridiculous (it’s not) and the bus driver was at fault (again, he wasn’t) and now a story that was embarrassing already looks even more so.
The Chiefs are right to feel angered at the whole affair. Their head coach won’t even own what he did. That makes it even worse.