Jon Gruden Absolutely Sucks At Zoom

April 21, 2020April 21, 2020 Austin

Glad to know that Jon Gruden sucks at things other than coaching an NFL team and building a winning roster. We can now apparently add Zoom calls to that list.

He recently popped in on an online class at the University of Tennessee.

Apparently, Tennessee has organized these things regularly – at least enough to where it has it’s own YouTube intro – with people like Peyton Manning, Josh Dobbs, and others. But I’m not ready to write this up as a scheduled course crash just yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gruden was supposed to be signing in for NFL Draft run-throughs and somehow ended up in the Zoom call of a random Tennessee class.

You couldn’t see him for half his appearance and then even after he said bye he couldn’t figure out how to log off.

Honestly, it’s not a shocker Jon Gruden would fail with modern technology considering his quote from his first meeting with the media after returning to the Raiders at the 2018 NFL Combine:

“I’m trying to throw the game back to 1998… I’m not going to rely on modern technology. I will certainly have some people that are professional that can help me from that regard. But I still think doing things the old fashioned way is a good way.”

Trying to throw the game back to 1998? No wonder he’s at Tennessee.

But we really shouldn’t be surprised that a guy who traded away Khalil Mack, Amari Cooper and signed Antonio Brown doesn’t know how to make the right calls. That man is your head coach, Raiders. A guy who, in 2020, can’t figure out how to hang up a Zoom call. This isn’t coding a website, 3-D printing weaponry, or even basic college statistics. It’s just clicking a button on a Zoom call that very clearly reads: “Leave Meeting.”

Look, the overall idea of these course drop-ins is cool. It’s creative. It’s fun. It hopefully incentivizes kids to go to class during these times. However, (and not to take anything away from what Tennessee is doing) when you really think about it, the premise is kinda lame. If these people were crashing classes in person, it’d be awesome. But instead it’s, “Oh cool, a celebrity on my computer screen?! No way!” If I wanted to see a celebrity on my computer screen, I could go to any website on the Internet… or, I dunno, Netflix? Hell, if I wanted to watch Jon Gruden struggle with how to make a webcam work, I’ll just watch the NFL Draft on Thursday night. Now obviously, I get it. No one’s going to physical classrooms right now. But the worst part of any Zoom call is having to explain it to someone who’s technically challenged, and that was essentially Grudes’ entire call.

I will say this, however. Every time I see this icon on one of my video conferences…