FanHouse JonGruden

It's June, so a lot can change between now and the start of training camp in six weeks, but apparently the Buccaneers are thinking about giving the starting quarterback gig to rookie first-round pick Josh Freeman.

Before last season, I would have had a hard time supporting that plan, but Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco changed all that. Ryan led the Falcons, a four-win outfit in 2007, to the postseason; Flacco made it to the AFC Conference Championship game with the Ravens, a team that finished 5-11 the year before.

Now, the Bucs might have similar ideas for Freeman. And they were 9-7 in 2008, which, in theory, means they have fewer holes to patch.

Jon Gruden is the new Tony Kornheiser. Just about everybody not working for NFL Network is cool with that.

Mr. Tony the columnist and Pardon the Interruption co-host was nothing like Mr. Tony the third wheel in the Monday Night Football booth, and his departure -- whether on his own terms or otherwise -- is a welcome change. Before ESPN named Gruden to replace Kornheiser, NFL Network had similar plans: they wanted Chucky to move into Cris Collinsworth's seat (Cris graduated to Sunday Night Football after John Madden retired) and work alongside Bob Papa on the eight Thursday night games.

Rumor spread a few years ago at a golf course outside Chicago, that John Daly, who was supposed to be there, had had a heart attack and died. The next day, he showed up at his practice round.

Afterward, as he stuffed his clubs into the trunk of the car, prepared to head off to Hooters for an autograph session, and stopped for a quick smoke, I talked with him in the parking lot.

John Daly is a lot like Johnny Depp: born in the South, in his 40s, loves kicking it in Europe, and now, thanks to lap-band surgery, looks unreasonably thin (well, relative to the old JD, anyway). And while he has yet to bust out the pirate ensemble (although I suspect it'll soon be in the rotation), he enjoys dressing up in funny outfits.

Now, after serving a six-month suspension, Daly will be back on the PGA Tour. The former two-time major winner is still without his card, but he'll be in the field at the St. Jude Championship in three weeks on a sponsor's exemption. Just like old times. Save the fact that he's 40 pounds lighter and probably playing some of his best golf in recent years.

Jon Gruden made national headlines yesterday when he replaced Tony Kornheiser on ESPN's Monday Night Football. Kornheiser, of course, "stepped down" (as MDS, Ryan and I noted last night, that may or may not be extremely convenient) from his role in the booth with very little noise aside from the original announcement.

All in all, it was a pretty smooth transition. That is until SI's Peter King dropped a bombshell in his Tuesday morning version of Monday Morning Quarterback, teased via his Twitter account.

The FanHouse Podcast: Because bloggers are much sexier on the phone.

In Episode 23, FanHouse's Michael David Smith joins Will Brinson and Ryan Wilson to talk about Tony Kornheiser's departure from Monday Night Football. Jon Gruden now has the gig, but is it a one-year deal? And is there a chance that should Gruden return to coaching in 2010, Matt Millen is next in line? Good times.

The conversation also touches on Malcolm Gladwell, who thinks the Lions had nothing to lose by featuring the no-huddle during their run to 0-16 last season, as well as the latest on Brett Favre. Naturally.

Tony Kornheiser gets very mad when I sit in his chair, pick up his personalized bobblehead from the studio set and shake the doll. In fact, even when I don't have the privilege of sometimes subbing for him on ESPN's Pardon The Interruption, he seems to dislike me -- maybe because I have a full head of hair or, more likely, because I'm intellectually beneath him.

That's OK. I am grateful anyway.

I thank him because he did the sportswriting profession proud in his three years on Monday Night Football. Kornheiser technically isn't a sportswriter anymore, having escaped the dying newspaper business like many of us, but when he was hired for one of the most high-profile assignments in sports television, he was dismissed by many viewers and critics as a columnist painfully out of his league.

---

---

ESPN has announced that former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden will replace Tony Kornheiser on the network's Monday Night Football broadcasts.

The goal of every NFL team is to win the Super Bowl. Even if, through front-office hires and player acquisitions, that doesn't always appear to be the case. But of the last 15 teams to hoist the Lombardi trophy, only two featured quarterbacks not classified as "franchise caliber."

In 2000, the Ravens won it all with a kick-ass defense. Trent Dilfer's job was to give the ball to Jamal Lewis and get out of the way. Two years later: same story, different team. The Buccaneers' defense did the heavy lifting; Brad Johnson was in charge of game-managing Jon Gruden's version of the West Coast offense with short passes and handoffs.

As happens on the last Saturday in April every year, I spent the day on my couch watching Roger Goodell and Ray Anderson read names off a card. The NFL Draft is the biggest event of the football offseason, even though it involves a bunch of guys in suits sitting around a set telling us about players who won't see the field for another four months.

The spectacle has gotten so big it gets wall-to-wall coverage on two networks. I'm partial to the NFL Network over ESPN because I have a crush on Mike Mayock, and because I couldn't stand the awkwardness of a Mel Kiper-Todd McShay slap fight.