"The goal will be to deliver the game," said producer Jay Rothman before Monday's New York Jets-Baltimore Ravens game. "Fans are tuning in for a game. They want football."

After 21st-century experiments involving Dennis Miller, Lisa Guerrero and Tony Kornheiser and various celeb drop-bys, MNF has replaced Kornheiser with TV rookie Jon Gruden (left) to team with Ron Jaworski and play-by-play man Mike Tirico. Jaworski says he and Gruden call each other constantly as they watch games and suggests they'll never have to feign fascination: "We're football geeks!"

And Gruden, 46, doesn't worry about Jaworski keeping his head in the game: "It's his life."

The obvious question is whether Gruden, who's coached football from his first year out of college until he was fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this year, wants a life in TV. The three weeks so far, he says, have brought "some of the neatest experiences I've ever had in football. … And, if I'm good enough, I'd like to continue to do it." And not, he suggests, because TV is all fun and games compared to coaches' wins and losses: "This is a lot more pressure (than coaching). I don't have any experience to draw on."

But Rothman says, so far, Gruden "is fabulous; he could be an all-timer in this business, really," and has coaching experience that's transferable to TV. He says Gruden, who once coached the Oakland Raiders, told him Raiders owner Al Davis "ripped me to shreds. So there's nothing you could say that could hurt me."

Easy to say until Rothman, say, rips into Gruden for wearing the wrong TV makeup. But Rothman says he's not worried about Gruden seeing TV as just a season-long pit stop between coaching jobs: "He says he wants to be great, and I don't concern myself with all the one-and-done talk."