The offense itself might not have been different for Jordy Nelson to get the hang of when he came to the Raiders in 2018, but some of the verbiage was.
“That was one of the hard parts of trying to delete everything that we had in Green Bay,” Nelson said in an interview on The Pat McAfee Show. “I think with [Jon] Gruden, he adds so much week-to-week in a game plan that is completely different than the normal set of offense. He has his normal install that you would do, but then every week there’s a whole other downloaded system pretty much of ‘We’re going to run this against the Broncos -- and then next week against the Chiefs we’re going to run all of these.”
Nelson said there was a lot of new information that needed to be learned, but he managed OK. He comes from a Mike McCarthy offense that was up-tempo, but very quarterback/wide receiver friendly which could have made it simpler to maintain some of what Gruden was saying. After a decade with the same team, that could have proved tricky, but perhaps not with someone of Nelson’s status.
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Some of the younger guys could have been overwhelmed, Nelson admitted. Even saying there was an amount of “system overload.” And they didn’t have a guy like Kyle Shanahan who worked as a middle man of sorts with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers back in the day.
Sometimes details would even get lost as NBC Sports’ Chris Simms said in an interview. Simms played under Gruden and admitted that the coach was “a psycho,” but in a good way, of course.
[RELATED: Nelson believes Derek Carr, Gruden have strong bond]
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Gruden is a guy who loves to embrace his Swiss Army Knife of an offense.
Either way, it appeared the acquisition of Nelson turned out well. Not only because he works well with seasoned quarterbacks, but it wasn’t a high-maintenance add. He was able to pick up the playbook relatively quickly.