There had been speculation that Jon Gruden was nearing a return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers but they announced that Dirk Koetter would remain as head coach.

Gruden was pursued by the Buccaneers and Raiders but chose the situation with the Raiders as he was given more money and more power.

“By Friday, Oakland had emerged as a major player, talking to Gruden’s agent,” Kaufman said. “Nobody talks to Gruden directly, everything goes through Gruden’s agent, as it should be. And Gruden’s agent, operating from a position of tremendous strength, tremendous leverage. . . . Here comes Oakland. Mark Davis, Al’s son. And in the discussions with the agent, it’s basically the agent gets the impression, ‘Whatever you guys want. Let’s make this happen. Whatever you want.’ Well, when he gets back to the Glazers and basically says, ‘We have other options, and [a] concrete option in Oakland, and they’re willing to do this, and do this, and do this.’ And I think it reached a point where the Glazers, talking among themselves, the co-chairmen, said, ‘We can’t go that far. We’re not willing to go that far. A stake in the team. $10 million dollars. Total authority. We can’t do it. Doesn’t make any sense.’ So God bless Jon. Good luck. And at that point they reached the same conclusion that I wrote 10 days ago: If you can’t get Gruden, give Koetter another chance. . . . To even suggest that the Bucs had no interest in Jon Gruden coming back to One Buc Place. How naive can you be?”