When Jon Gruden originally signed on to coach the Raiders back in 2018, the long-time NFL coach signed a monstrous 10-year deal that was scheduled to pay him nearly $100 million. After his resignation on Oct. 11, one of the key things that had to be figured out between Gruden and the Raiders was how much money he was going to walk away with.
Apparently, the two sides have finally hammered out a deal. At the NFL owners meetings in New York on Wednesday, Raiders owner Mark Davis confirmed that he has reached a settlement with the team’s former coach, according to the Athletic.
Although the details of the settlement aren’t known, the team still owed Gruden nearly $40 million in guaranteed money at the time of his resignation. Due to the way his tenure ended with the Raiders, there’s a good chance Gruden didn’t walk away with the full $40 million, but you can also probably assume that he didn’t walk away empty-handed. The former Raiders coach resigned from his job after multiple emails leaked earlier this month that showed him using misogynistic, homophobic and racist language during conversations with former Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen.
During his talk with the media on Wednesday, Davis made sure to note that he wasn’t happy with the NFL about how the situation played out. If the NFL had access to the emails in the summer, Davis wants to know why he didn’t get them then.
“It’s a timing issue, that’s probably the disappointment that I had,” Davis said. “If we had gotten the information in the summer, when they learned about it, it would have been a lot easier for everyone involved.”
If that had happened, the Raiders could have parted ways with Gruden during the offseason, which would have given a new coach some time to get acclimated to the team. Instead, Gruden resigned five weeks into the season, which means the Raiders will have to play the rest of the year with an interim coach.
Davis was so upset with how the email situation was handled that he actually called on the NFL to release a written report of the entire Washington Football Team investigation.
“I think that there should be, yeah,” Davis said when asked if there should be a written report, via ESPN.com. “Especially with some of the things that were, I guess, charged. Yeah, I believe so, I think people deserve [a written report], especially people that were, quote, victims.”
As for the Gruden situation, Davis was asked why he let him coach in Week 5 against the Bears even though some of the emails had been leaked out in the days before the game.
“We found out about it Thursday [before the Bears game] from the Wall Street Journal,” Davis said. “We didn’t hear about it from the league. And (the Wall Street Journal) wouldn’t give us the email at that time, so we didn’t really have it, it was a rumor to us. We then spoke with the league and they said they had that and other emails. We didn’t see those until Friday.”
After getting the emails on Friday, Davis didn’t just want to dump Gruden without looking into things first.
“I wanted to do the due diligence, I wasn’t just going to rush to judgment on Jon,” Davis said. “So we went through the process. We talked to a lot of the alumni, we talked to a lot of the players, we talked to a lot of the people involved in the situation and came to the decision.”
Less than 24 hours after the Raiders 20-9 loss to Chicago, Gruden had resigned his job.
“He’s hurt,” Davis said of Gruden, via ESPN.com. “He’s really hurt, and I understand that. But he understands the ramifications of what he said.
The Raiders have actually been on a roll since Gruden’s resignation. The team has gone 2-0 without their former coach to push their record to 5-2, which is tied for the best mark in the AFC.