Jon Gruden: Does Chucky Have a Home Back in Oakland?

After the news broke, it was a form of chaos rarely seen by the Raider Nation.

Chucky, the face of evil after all these years, was finally out, along with his GM, Bruce Allen.

To some degree, it wasn't too surprising. It was a similar fate another owner had to make about another Super Bowl-winning coach, Mike Shanahan.

And yes, it's also ironic both coaches used to wear silver and black.

Now, it's highly unlikely you'd ever see Mike Shanahan in Raiders' attire (even as a bad practical joke), what about Gruden coming back to Oakland?

When Al Davis unceremoniously dropped Kiffin out the door earlier this year, he felt he had made a mistake, in who Kiffin was. Would, or could, Al admit to his own mistake, that he did the wrong thing by getting rid of Gruden back then?

At the same time, in all the chaos, the second question gets asked, should we try?

For the first question, Gruden did have two things as the coach of the Raiders. He had the respect of the players, because he wouldn't accept the antics that went on. I would have loved to see how he would have handled Randy Moss and his "I play when I wanna play" attitude.

He had that swagger, that fans would rally behind. And for better or for worse, you knew he was in it, thick or thin.

Then Al Davis dumped him, for draft picks, money, and the thought, there's no way we'll face him again...Besides, we have Bill Callahan.

Less than a year later, sure enough, not only did we have to face him...It was almost like he was in the huddle with Gannon, Rice, Brown, and the other teammates in San Diego, 2003.

It would be nice to have the swagger back.

However, comes the second question.

Sure, we were bitter over the loss in 2002. Things haven't been rosy, they've been downright putrid with the last series of coaches, players and media bashing. Everyone from Davis on down was second guessed as the team went into a death spiral, with few bright points.

In the meantime, after Gruden's parade, Tampa Bay had a trophy. However, he found returning to get another one really, really hard. In fact, he only reached the playoffs twice in that time period, and was bumped out twice, first by the Redskins, then by the Giants.

After the December disaster, there was no one else to take the blame.

If we brought back Gruden, would we be getting the pre-trade Gruden, with the fire and guts that we enjoyed? Or would we be getting back the post-Super Bowl Gruden, who struggled to find his way to the postseason?

On top of this, the Raiders are presently trying to piece together a coaching staff, keep the forward progress we finished with moving...And that included the last win of the year, over the Gruden just mentioned.

So this is the quandary we now face ourselves with.

Do we take Gruden, try to pretend it's 2000 all over again, and see if Chucky has the recipe to make it work?

Or do we stick it out with Cable, a coach who has this teams' respect, and look forward to improving on the 5-11 record?