Positively Gruden, Falcons at Bucs: With Highest Honors

Welcome to another rendition of “Positively Gruden,” where we chronicle the top praise, plaudits, and pontifications from America’s favorite fawning former coach. The coach was especially amped up for last night’s Falcons-Bucs game due to his halftime induction into the Bucs’ Ring-of-Honor. Sadly, his former team is far from their days of glory, suffering another heartbreaking loss to drop to 4-10 on the season. But the game itself was exciting, yielding a solid fifteen Grudenisms that featured the *real* Matty Ice, an Oscar-winning movie quote, and a rather disturbing wardrobe homage to the coach and his famous fictional doppelganger.

As always, top Grudenisms are graded on a sliding scale of hyperbole, vivid imagery, and outright absurdity.

15. “DeSean Jackson, what a playmaker he has been. One of the great deep ball threats in football.”

14. “Freeman goes to work on Ward. This is quite a runner and receiver and do it all back for the Falcons. Wow!”

13. “I like the way the Falcons do business. I like their head coach, Dan Quinn.”

12. “How would you like to be a linebacker and see Dontari Poe, 350 lbs, coming full speed at you?” (Um, not very much?)

11. On Matt Ryan, “This man can communicate, he can recognize problems, and man can he fix them FAST.”

10. On Julio Jones, “His statistics are great, but if you just charted the things you wanted a receiver to do. Is he fast, is he quick, is he a great route runner, does he have hands, does he have work ethic, will he compete? He checks all those boxes. He’s a ten in each of those categories.”

9. More Jones love, “He will punish you after the catch. The thing about Jones is he can make you miss, or he can BLAST you.”

8. After a Falcons TD, “Great call by Steve Sarkisian, I call it bunch CRUNCH….Sorry, I get in this stadium, I start acting weird, man.”

7. “Alan Cross has a fullback’s body with tight end traits.”

6. On Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee, Ben Garland, “The man flew an F-16. That’s amazing. I thought you had to be a certain size to be a pilot. I didn’t know left guards could even fit in those planes.”

5. “You got Matty Ice the quarterback, and the real Matty Ice to me is Matt Bryant.”

4. More Bryant love, “This guy put money in my wallet when he played for me years ago, and he’s still doing it.”

3. After a Jameis Winston TD, channeling, his inner Jack Nicholson, “That’s not good. That’s as good as it gets.”

2. “I’d like to go out to dinner with that family. Terron and TJ Ward, not the biggest men, but they are physical football players.”

1. On Kwon Alexander: “I like his shoes. I love this man. How about that artwork? I’ll get you a pair of those for the holiday season.”