Jon Gruden's wife, Cindy, wonders if he's a little too in love with himself. Part of Gruden's postgame homework as the newest analyst at ESPN's 'Monday Night Football' is to watch tapes of the broadcasts he has called so that he can analyze his progress in his new profession. 'She's been giving me a hard time,' he said during a recent telephone call from Tampa, Fla. 'They make you watch the game a few times, so I can look at what I did well and at my mistakes. So my wife thinks I'm a narcissist, watching myself while I'm on the treadmill. She's unmerciful. She's told me to get over myself.' The narcissist's early self-analysis: -- Avoid talking while your co-analyst, Ron Jaworski, is talking. -- Don't talk while the ball is in play. -- Learn which camera is on when you do a live shot with Jaworski and Mike Tirico. 'Sometimes my mannerisms are a bit raw,' Gruden said. (My recommendation: Stop saying 'we' when discussing teams you've coached.) Gruden's track record as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with whom he won a Super Bowl, and as an assistant with various NFL and college teams provides the credibility necessary for his new career. His enthusiasm, brashness and loquaciousness are also assets. But translating those skills to being a No. 1 analyst, who will inevitably be compared with John Madden, Phil Simms and Cris Collinsworth, is not always simple. 'It's really different in the booth,' Gruden said. 'You're not really emotionally attached to the outcome of every play. You're removed, and you don't want to overanalyze every 3-yard gain or incomplete pass.' He misses coaching, which is not a surprise, and he cannot guarantee ESPN his long-term services. 'I'm not going to lie,' he said. 'I've coached for more than 20 years -- small colleges, big colleges, NFL head coach for 11 years -- so absolutely, you miss the competition, you miss a scoreboard telling you how you're doing.' Hiring Gruden, 46, represents another shift back to pure football at 'Monday Night.' The series, first at ABC, then at ESPN, has been schizophrenic about casting analysts since Howard Cosell and Don Meredith turned football into prime-time entertainment in the early days. While for many years ABC paired Dan Dierdorf and Frank Gifford, and then teamed Dierdorf and Boomer Esiason, it didn't stick to that formula. Esiason and Madden have been the only 'Monday Night' analysts since 1999 who didn't have a partner from outside the football world. Dan Fouts worked with Dennis Miller. Joe Theismann and then Jaworski worked with the former Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser. 'Fans want football; they want the X's and Os,' said Jay Rothman, producer of 'Monday Night.' 'In focus groups, we've heard that loud and clear.' He credits Kornheiser with helping 'Monday Night' to three Sports Emmy nominations but isn't sure fans appreciated his journalistic talent for elevating certain moments. 'Truthfully, Jaws was 50 percent X's and Os the last couple of years,' Rothman said, referring to Jaworski. 'Now he's the junkie he's more comfortable being and has somebody in Jon to go mano-a-mano with.' Jaworski is respected for his deep game-film study, but Rothman said Gruden was at least as masterly in his film craft. Gruden keeps a library of thousands of game and practice tapes from his coaching days, dating to 1992 in Green Bay, where he was an assistant during Brett Favre's first season there. Gruden used to edit the images to help his players. Now he's editing them to help prepare the broadcast. 'I'd say, 'What is it about Brett Favre that will let him succeed with the Vikings?'' Rothman said. 'Everyone says it's because he knows this system. He said, 'Jay, there was a play from his first preseason game that he ran in 1992 with the Packers.' And he brought out the tape. He brings us a pillow case full of homemade tapes he's spliced together with some archaic, clunky editing system in his dungeon in Tampa.' He added: 'I want to make Gruden's Vault a regular feature, to let Jon takes us into his way-back machine. I want to go into Chucky's vault.' With less at stake in the booth, Gruden said the repertory of extreme facial contortions that earned him the cinematic 'Chucky' nickname when he worked the sidelines would probably stay in suspended animation. 'When a holding call nullified a big gain, I'd get unglued,' he said. 'When you shred a blitz and hit Galloway for 80 yards, I can't help myself.' Recalling a fumble on a botched handoff from quarterback Mark Sanchez that nearly cost the Jets possession in their preseason game against the Ravens on 'Monday Night,' he said, 'I almost became unglued.' The thing about Chucky, he explained, 'is he's just a guy caught up in the moment.' 