Tag Archives: Gruden

Washington’s Jack Del Rio on Jon Gruden emails: ‘I don’t have much respect for it’

Jack Del Rio didn’t mince words when he was asked about Jon Gruden and the emails that were revealed to show homophobic and misogynistic comments in conversations with former Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen and others.

Gruden replaced Del Rio as head coach with the then-Oakland Raiders before the start of the 2018 season. Del Rio is the last Raiders coach to get to the playoffs and is the only one to get to the postseason since the team lost the Super Bowl to the Gruden-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers during the 2002 season.

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Coach Jack Del Rio of the Jacksonville Jaguars meets coach Jon Gruden of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after play at Raymond James Stadium on Oct. 28, 2007, in Tampa, Florida. The Jaguars won 24-23.
(Photo by Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images)

Del Rio, now the defensive coordinator for Washington, characterized Gruden’s emails as “shocking” and “embarrassingly bad.”

“It was, I guess, shocking. Embarrassingly bad for a person in that position to have those kinds of thoughts and to express them like that. I don’t have much respect for it,” he said Thursday, via NBC Sports Washington.

Gruden’s email scandal cast a dark cloud over the Raiders this week. He resigned in the wake of The New York Times report about the emails.

NFL LAWYER JEFF PASH’S EMAILS WITH EX-WASHINGTON EXEC SCRUTINIZED IN NEW REPORTS

“I have resigned as Head Coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. I love the Raiders and do not want to be a distraction. Thank you to all the players, coaches, staff, and fans of Raider Nation. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone,” he said in a statement.

Defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio of the Washington Football Team looks on during minicamp at Inova Sports Performance Center on June 8, 2021, in Ashburn, Virginia.
(Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)

Gruden in at least one email, according to the Times, called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell an anti-gay slur and a “clueless anti-football p—y” and argued that Goodell shouldn’t have allegedly pressured then-St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher to draft “queers,” in reference to former NFL defensive lineman Michael Sam, who was the first openly gay player to be selected in the draft.

Head coach Jack Del Rio of the Oakland Raiders looks on from the sidelines against the Kansas City Chiefs during their NFL football game at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on Oct. 19, 2017, in Oakland, California. 
(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

The email appeared to show a complete disconnect from Gruden’s messaging when his own player Carl Nassib came out as gay before the start of the 2021 season and became the first active openly gay NFL player.

The emails were reviewed as part of an NFL workplace investigation into the Washington Football Team. Gruden’s emails about Goodell were flagged in the investigation. Among them were disparaging remarks about NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith.

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Gruden was in the fourth year of a 10-year, $100 million contract. He was also removed from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Ring of Honor.

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Jon Gruden emails: Ex-NFL QB calls controversy ‘disappointing,’ knew second report would doom coaching career

Shaun King was on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a brief time when Jon Gruden was the head coach of the organization, and he reacted to the email fallout on Tuesday.

The former NFL quarterback told Compare.bet he was shocked after the first Gruden email was obtained by The Wall Street Journal last week.

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Quarterback Brad Johnson (14) of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers talks to his head coach Jon Gruden during the game against the Tennessee Titans on Dec. 28, 2003, at The Coliseum in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans defeated the Buccaneers, 33-13. Quarterback Shaun King (10) is at left.
(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

“The first email I saw was the one directed at (NFLPA executive director) DeMaurice Smith. I was shocked by it, actually, because it was so distasteful and so unnecessary. It illuminates that sometimes you think you know someone, and maybe you don’t. You just know what their presentation to you is. It was disappointing,” King said.

King told the website he knew Gruden was finished once The New York Times published the other emails, which showed homophobic and misogynistic comments and other vulgar remarks about NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

“What has the NFL been pushing from a narrative standpoint? Upward mobility and equality for women. You see women being hired within a lot of organizations in roles that traditionally were only for men. And inclusivity, whether it be sexual, religion, right to protest. When those emails came out, I knew the end was near. You can’t defend that verbiage,” King told Compare.bet.

Quarterback Shaun King (10) of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers talks to head coach Jon Gruden during the game against the Tennessee Titans on Dec. 28, 2003, at The Coliseum in Nashville, Tennessee. 
(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

JON GRUDEN EMAILS: NFL CALLED ON TO RELEASE FINDINGS IN WASHINGTON PROBE

“A championship football team is built on accountability, discipline and respect. The fact that they have a gay player, and then it comes out what he said about the kid from Missouri that was drafted (Michael Sam). It’s impossible now to go to (Carl Nassib) and explain that.”

The former quarterback said he never had any negative interactions with Gruden but the emails show someone different than the person he knew.

“He just has to look inside, because when you write something like that and send it, you mean it. If you’re joking with your boys, hydrating and having a couple cocktails, somebody might say something slick. But when you sit down and form sentences… it’s hard to turn around and say you didn’t mean anything by it. In my personal interactions with Jon Gruden, I never viewed him as racist, but those emails depict a different person,” he added.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden directs  the North team at the 2007 Under Armour Senior Bowl in Mobile Jan. 27. (Photo by A. Messerschmidt/Getty Images)
(Photo by A. Messerschmidt/Getty Images)

King was a backup quarterback for the Buccaneers in 2002 when Brad Johnson and the stellar Tampa Bay defense led the team to a Super Bowl win. He would play four games for the Arizona Cardinals in 2004 before jumping from team to team. He would never see another down after the 2004 season.

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The former second-round pick would play in the Arena Football League and the Canadian Football League before going into coaching.

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Jon Gruden emails: NFL called on to release findings in Washington probe

The attorneys for several Washington Football Team cheerleaders who accused the organization of workplace misconduct called on the NFL to release the findings of its investigation into the franchise.

Lisa Banks and Debra Katz released the joint statement on Tuesday, hours after Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden stepped down as emails showed he sent misogynistic and homophobic messages to several people, including former Washington president Bruce Allen.

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Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden speaks on his headset during the first half of an NFL football game against the Chicago Bears, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021, in Las Vegas.
(AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

According to The New York Times, Gruden’s emails with Allen and others included “photos of women wearing only bikini bottoms, including one photo of two Washington cheerleaders.”

“It is truly outrageous that after the NFL’s 10-month long investigation involving hundreds of witnesses and 650,000 documents related to the longtime culture of harassment and abuse at the Washington Football Team, the only person to be held accountable and lose their job is the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders,” the statement read.

“If the NFL felt it appropriate to release these offensive emails from Jon Gruden, which it obtained during its investigation into the Washington Football Team, it must also release the findings related to the actual target of that investigation. Our clients and the public at large deserve transparency and accountability. If not, the NFL and Roger Goodell must explain why they appear intent on protecting the Washington Football Team and owner Dan Snyder at all costs.”

RAIDERS OWNER MARK DAVIS DECLINES TO COMMENT ON JON GRUDEN: NFL HAS ‘ALL THE ANSWERS’

Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden wears an Oakland Raiders hat before an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Chargers, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020, in Las Vegas.
(AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)

Melanie Coburn, a former Washington cheerleader, started a petition calling on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to release the findings of the investigation into the organization.

“The NFL must do the right thing and make the sexual misconduct investigation of the WFT public AND hold Dan Snyder accountable for the history of serial sexual harassment within his organization,” Coburn wrote.

In 2018, The New York Times reported that some cheerleaders were forced to pose topless and act as escorts during a calendar photo shoot trip to Costa Rica in 2013. Three dozen cheerleaders made the trip to Occidental Grand Papagayo, an adults-only resort, for the photo shoot, and according to the newspaper they were forced to pose topless and wearing body paint. The near-nude photos were never published but the photos came up again in the latest report from Monday.

Coburn told NPR she wasn’t a part of the salacious shoot but was in contact with the cheerleaders who were.

“They’re all traumatized. It’s just more anxiety-producing evidence that very private, compromising content was circulating not just amongst our team but apparently the entire NFL. So it’s been an emotional 24 hours, to say the least,” Coburn said.

Former Washington cheerleaders accused the franchise of workplace misconduct.
(Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

NFL vice president of communications Brian McCarthy told NPR the league has no plans to release emails related to the investigation.

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“We have released no emails during this process and have no plans to do so,” he said.

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Derek Carr on Jon Gruden: I love the man, hate the sin

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A number of Raiders players had their first chance to publicly comment on former head coach Jon Gruden’s resignation on Wednesday, including quarterback Derek Carr.

Carr said there’s no book on how to respond to the revelations about what Gruden said in his emails and that he felt “angry, sick, upset, mad, frustrated” about what’s happened. He said he also feels “empathy” for a coach he has grown close to over the last few years.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love the man, and you hate the sin,” Carr said, via Paul Gutierrez of ESPN.com. “Like for anybody, no one is perfect. If we just started opening up everybody’s private emails and texts, people will start sweating a little bit. Hopefully not too many, but maybe that’s what they should do for all coaches and GMs and owners from now on. You got to open up everything and see what happens. But you hate the action, you hate it. You’re not supposed to like it, but you love the person. And I love the person. I’ve grown to love him so much.”

While Carr is processing those feelings, he’s also cognizant that the team still has 12 games left in their season and “everything out in front of us that we’ve wanted from the beginning.” He said the team needs a leader “more than ever” and that it is his job to be that kind of leader in hopes of making sure that the team can move forward from the Gruden tumult without sinking their season.

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Adam Schefter roped into Jon Gruden drama over email to Bruce Allen

Jon Gruden’s inflammatory emails, in which he used derogatory and racially insensitive language that led to him resigning as head coach from the Raiders, were part of an investigation of the Washington Football Team by the NFL. The league seized over 650,000 emails, according to several reports.

It’s possible that there are damaging things for a lot of people in those emails, but one interesting tidbit was revealed in a June court filing that led to the revelation of Gruden’s words. In July 2011 during the NFL lockout, ESPN insider Adam Schefter sent an email of an unpublished story to then-Washington GM Bruce Allen, asking for feedback.

“Please let me know if you see anything that should be added, changed, tweaked,” Schefter wrote to Allen, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Thanks, Mr. Editor, for that and the trust. Plan to file this to espn about 6 am ….”

Per the LA Times, the court filing was part of Washington owner Dan Snyder’s defamation lawsuit in India, in which he was trying to compel Allen to produce information.

ESPN shared a statement in response to the discovery.

Adam Schefter and Jon Gruden
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“Without sharing all the specifics of the reporter’s process for a story from 10 years ago during the NFL lockout, we believe that nothing is more important to Adam and ESPN than providing fans the most accurate, fair and complete story,” the statement read.

Schefter is arguably the top insider in all of NFL media, and consistently breaks the top stories in the league. It’s not particularly surprising to hear he has a relationship with important league figures – but the extent of that relationship may come as a surprise, especially with a league figure who has been under immense fire.

Allen was the person Gruden shared his derogatory remarks with, in which he used the words “p–sy,” “fa—t” and “queers” to describe league figures and shared topless photos of Washington cheerleaders, among other offenses.

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Jon Gruden removed from Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Ring of Honor following resignation

Gruden resigned after reports emerged of him using homophobic, racist and misogynistic language in emails while he worked as an ESPN analyst.

He led the Buccaneers to the franchise’s first Super Bowl title in the 2002 season, beating the then-Oakland Raiders, but has now been removed from the team’s ring of honor membership.

“The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have advocated for purposeful change in the areas of race relations, gender equality, diversity and inclusion for many years,” the team said in a statement.

“While we acknowledge Jon Gruden’s contributions on the field, his actions go against our core values as an organization. Therefore, he will no longer continue to be a member of the Buccaneers Ring of Honor.”

Critics had called for Gruden, who has coached the Raiders since the beginning of the 2018 season, to be fired since The Wall Street Journal reported he used racially insensitive language to describe NFL Players Association (NFLPA) executive director DeMaurice Smith in a 2011 email.

On Monday, the New York Times reported it reviewed more emails and found Gruden denounced women being employed as on-field officials, a team drafting an openly gay player and the tolerance for national anthem protesters.

The Times said the emails were sent to Bruce Allen, the former president of the Washington Football Team, over a seven-year period, causing many to question why he was allowed to stay in his role for so long. Allen was fired by the organization in December 2019.

On Friday, an NFL spokesperson said the email reported in the Wall Street Journal was unearthed as part of an NFL review of workplace misconduct at the Washington Football Team that took place this summer.

CNN has reached out again to Gruden, the NFL and the Raiders for comment.

A spokesperson from the NFLPA told CNN the union plans to request that the NFL make public the full finding of the investigation into workplace misconduct within the Washington Football Team.

Smith told USA Today that there is “potential for good” to come from this situation.

“It took a long time for the league to recognize that they had not listened to the players and addressed their concerns about why players were kneeling or why players were actively becoming engaged in social justice issues,” he said.

“Maybe there is the potential here for recognizing that there are people within our system that engage in or support ideas that we know are inconsistent with fairness and justice and equality, and maybe if we can embrace that quicker, then it gives us an opportunity to understand and fix what I believe are systemic problems in diverse hiring in the league.”

‘That sh*t doesn’t fly’

The NFL’s reigning Most Valuable Player, Aaron Rodgers, weighed in on Gruden’s resignation, saying: “Those opinions don’t have a place in the game.”

“It was surprising to see that the thing went so quickly, but I think that was probably the best decision for all parties involved,” he said on The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday.

“Hopefully, we can all as a league learn and grow from this. Hopefully, it puts people on notice who have some of those same opinions. Like: ‘Hey man, it’s time to grow and evolve and change and connect.’ That sh*t doesn’t fly.”

NFL reporter Ian Rapoport told CNN on Tuesday that Gruden had no other option but to resign as head coach, saying he had lost his credibility within the Raiders locker room, especially given that Carl Nassib — who became the first active NFL player in league history to announce that he is gay earlier this year — plays for the team.
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And Green Bay Packers quarterback Rodgers believes that the views expressed in Gruden’s emails aren’t ones that are felt in locker rooms around the league.

“I can say with real honesty and pride that I don’t feel like those are opinions that are shared by players,” the 37-year-old said.

“I feel like in the locker room it’s a close-knit group of guys, and we don’t treat people differently based on the way that they talk, where they’re from, what they’re into, what they look like, and I’m proud of that.”

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Keyshawn Johnson calls Jon Gruden a ‘fraud’ after resignation

Jon Gruden has “always been a fraud” in Keyshawn Johnson’s eyes.

On Tuesday, the former NFL wide receiver went off about his former coach after Gruden resigned as head coach of the Raiders in wake of a disturbing email controversy.

Gruden announced his resignation on Monday night after emails from 2011 through 2018, obtained by the New York Times, exposed his use of racist, homophobic and misogynistic language.

“He’s always been a fraud to me. From day one, he’s been a used car salesman, and people bought it,” Johnson said on his ESPN Radio show, “Keyshawn, JWill and Max.”

Johnson played for Gruden in 2002 and 2003 as a member of the Buccaneers. The pair went on to win a Super Bowl together in 2002, after Gruden succeeded former Bucs coach Tony Dungy.

While Johnson said he’s “grateful” for Gruden’s push to help the team win a Super Bowl, he said, “I also saw through who he was through that journey of getting a championship.”

Johnson then recalled that the next year, then-Bucs general manager Rich McKay “left in the middle of the season to go take another job with another team because he didn’t want to be around [Gruden].”

Johnson later appeared on ESPN’s “First Take,” where he continued to slam the disgraced Gruden.

“But it’s the talking behind peoples back — that was one of his traits in Tampa…he was doing that a lot,” Johnson said.

Keyshawn Johnson and Jon Gruden
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Johnson and Gruden never got along, according to the three-time Pro Bowl receiver, who previously opened up about their rocky player-coach relationship after the Bucs deactivated him for the final six games of the 2003 season.

“I was never Gruden’s guy. He never liked me. I told him I’d rather retire than play for him in 2004,” Johnson told ESPN in November 2003.

The Raiders will continue their season on Sunday when they visit the Broncos in Week 6. Rich Bisaccia, previously the special teams coordinator, is taking over as interim head coach.



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Jon Gruden resigns as head coach of Las Vegas Raiders following reports of offensive emails

Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden has resign from his position, the Raiders announced Monday. The announcement came shortly after a report in the New York Times claimed that Gruden had sent a series of offensive emails while working as an analyst at ESPN.

“I have resigned as Head Coach of the Las Vegas Raiders,” Gruden said in a statement tweeted by the Raiders. “I love the Raiders and do not want to be a distraction. Thank you to all the players, coaches, staff, and fans of Raider Nation. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone.”

In a follow-up statement posted on Twitter, team owner Mark Davis said he has accepted Gruden’s resignation. Assistant head coach and special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia will take over head coaching duties on an interim basis, the Raiders announced. Bisaccia was part of Gruden’s coaching staff in Tampa Bay and has been a member of the Raiders coaching staff for the entirety of Gruden’s second stint with the team. Gruden was in the fourth year of 10-year contract with the team at the time of his resignation.

According to the New York Times, league officials conducting a workplace misconduct investigation — of which Gruden was not the focus — uncovered emails in which he wrote negatively about women referees, gay NFL players and players who protested during the playing of the national anthem. Gruden did not respond to the Times’ request for comment. 

Gruden last week also came under fire when The Wall Street Journal unearthed a 2011 email in which he made disparaging remarks about DeMaurice Smith, the head of the NFL players union. 

“Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michellin tires,” Gruden wrote, according to the Journal.

Gruden apologized for that comment at a post-game press conference Sunday.

“I’m not a racist,” Gruden said. “I can’t tell you how sick I am. I apologize again to D Smith, but I feel good about who I am and what I’ve done my entire life. … I had no racial intention with those remarks at all. I’m not like that at all. I apologize. I don’t want to keep addressing it.” 

Gruden began his second stint as the Raiders head coach in 2018, ending his tenure with a record of 22-31. He had previously coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2002-2008, leading them to a Super Bowl win in his first season, and the then-Oakland Raiders from 1998-2001. 

From 2009 to 2017, Gruden worked as an NFL analyst and Monday Night Football commentator for ESPN.

The Raiders, currently 3-2 on the season, are scheduled to take on the Denver Broncos on Sunday in a battle of AFC West rivals.



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Jon Gruden Emailed Homophobic and Mysogynistic Comments

When the vaunted N.F.L. coach Jon Gruden was confronted with a racist email he had sent in 2011 to insult the head of the players’ union, he said he went too far but didn’t have “a blade of racism” in him.

But league officials as part of a separate workplace misconduct investigation that did not directly involve him have found that Gruden, now the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, casually and frequently unleashed misogynistic and homophobic language over several years to denigrate people around the game and to mock some of the league’s momentous changes.

He denounced the emergence of women as referees, the drafting of a gay player and the tolerance of players protesting during the playing of the national anthem, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.

Now, he is planning to leave the team, according to reports by the NFL Network and ESPN, which cut into its broadcast of “Monday Night Football” during the first half on Monday night to say that Gruden would no longer coach the Raiders.

Gruden’s messages were sent to Bruce Allen, the former president of the Washington Football Team, and others, while he was working for ESPN as a color analyst during “Monday Night Football,” the sports network’s weekly prime-time telecast of N.F.L. games. In the emails, Gruden called the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, a “faggot” and a “clueless anti football pussy” and said that Goodell should not have pressured Jeff Fisher, then the coach of the Rams, to draft “queers,” a reference to Michael Sam, a gay player chosen by the team in 2014.

In numerous emails during a seven-year period ending in early 2018, Gruden criticized Goodell and the league for trying to reduce concussions and said that Eric Reid, a player who had demonstrated during the playing of the national anthem, should be fired. In several instances, Gruden used a homophobic slur to refer to Goodell and offensive language to describe some N.F.L. owners, coaches and journalists who cover the league.

Gruden, Allen, the N.F.L., and the Raiders did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Although not with a team at the time, Gruden was still influential in the league and highly coveted as a coach. He had won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following the 2002 season. And in 2018, he was hired for his second stint as the head coach of the Raiders franchise, which includes defensive lineman Carl Nassib, the first active N.F.L. player to publicly declare that he is gay.

The league said last week that it shared emails with the Raiders in which Gruden made derogatory comments.

Gruden told ESPN on Sunday that the league was reviewing emails in which he criticized Goodell, and explained that he had been upset about team owners’ lockout of the players in 2011, when some of the emails were written. Gruden said in that interview that had used an expletive to refer to Goodell and that he did so because he disapproved of Goodell’s emphasis on safety, which he believed was scaring parents into steering their sons away from football.

But Gruden’s behavior was not limited to 2011. Gruden exchanged emails with Allen and other men that included photos of women wearing only bikini bottoms, including one photo of two Washington team cheerleaders.

Gruden also criticized President Obama during his re-election campaign in 2012, as well as then-vice president Joe Biden, whom Gruden called a “nervous clueless pussy.” He used similar words to describe Goodell and DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the N.F.L. Players Association.

The league is already investigating Gruden as a result of another email he wrote to Allen in 2011 in which he used racist terms to describe Smith, who is Black.

In that email, Gruden, who is white and was working for ESPN at the time, criticized Smith’s intelligence and used a racist trope to describe his face. The correspondence was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by The New York Times.

Taken together, the emails provide an unvarnished look into the clubby culture of one N.F.L. circle of peers, where white male decision makers felt comfortable sharing pornographic images, deriding the league policies, and jocularly sharing homophobic language.

Their banter flies in the face of the league’s public denouncements of racism and sexism and its promises to be more inclusive amid criticism for not listening to the concerns of Black players, who make up about 70 percent of rosters. The N.F.L. has in the past struggled to discipline personnel who have committed acts of domestic violence and been condemned for failing to adequately address harassment of women, including N.F.L. cheerleaders.

The league, Smith, and Mark Davis, the owner of the Raiders, all denounced Gruden’s comments, but the coach thus far has not been penalized and he coached his team in its game on Sunday against the Chicago Bears. Gruden said Friday that he did not remember sending the email and that his language “went too far,” adding, “I never had a blade of racism in me.”

Gruden’s emails to Allen, who was fired by the Washington Football Team at the end of 2019, were reviewed as part of an N.F.L. investigation of workplace misconduct within the franchise that ended this summer. Goodell instructed league executives to look at more than 650,000 emails during the past few months, including those in which Gruden made offensive remarks. Last week, Goodell received a summary of their findings and the league sent the Raiders some of the emails written by Gruden.

In the exchanges, Gruden used his personal email account while Allen wrote from his team account. In some cases, Allen initiated the conversations and Gruden chimed in, while in other cases, they trade vulgar comments several times.

Some of the emails between Gruden and Allen also included businessmen friends, Ed Droste, the co-founder of Hooters; Jim McVay, an executive who has run the Outback Bowl, annually held in Tampa, Fla.; and Nick Reader, the founder of PDQ Restaurants, a Tampa-based fried chicken franchise. The exchanges begin as early as 2010 while Gruden was an analyst for “Monday Night Football.” In 2018, he signed a 10-year, $100 million contract to coach the Raiders.

Droste, McVay, and Reader did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Gruden and Allen are longtime friends and colleagues. Allen was a senior executive with the Raiders from 1995 to 2003, when he worked with Gruden, who was head coach of the team from 1998 to 2001. Gruden became head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002 and beat the Raiders in the Super Bowl that season. Allen became the general manager there in 2004. Allen and Gruden both left the Buccaneers after the 2008 season. While Gruden moved on to a broadcast role with ESPN, Allen became the general manager in Washington in 2010 and later the team’s president.

Allen, who is the son of legendary N.F.L. coach George Allen, and Gruden — whose father coached at Notre Dame and whose brother, Jay, was head coach in Washington from 2014 to 2019 — are part of an exclusive network that cycles between N.F.L. teams, networks and companies affiliated with the league.

In June, the N.F.L. congratulated Nassib after he became the first active N.F.L. player to publicly declare that he is gay. Goodell said he was “proud of Carl for courageously sharing his truth today. Representation matters.”

Privately, Allen and Gruden appeared to have few boundaries in expressing homophobic and transphobic language. In one email from 2015 that includes Droste, McVay and others, Gruden crudely asked Allen to tell Bryan Glazer, whose family owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where Gruden coached until 2008, to perform oral sex on him. Allen said Glazer would “take you up on that offer.”

Allen and Gruden also mocked Caitlyn Jenner, who received an award from ESPN in 2015 after she transitioned.

In an email from 2015, Allen and Gruden criticized a congressional bill that aimed to force the Washington franchise to change its name, which some Native Americans and others have denounced as a slur. Again using a vulgar term, Gruden took aim at Goodell and his staff even though the commissioner had initially defended the team’s right to keep the name.

In 2017, Droste shared with the group a sexist meme of a female referee to which Gruden replied, “Nice job roger.”

That same year, Gruden was sent a link to an article about N.F.L. players calling on Goodell to support their efforts promoting racial equality and criminal justice reform. Gruden had advice for Goodell:

“He needs to hide in his concussion protocol tent,” he wrote.

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Can the NFL, Raiders discipline Jon Gruden for his 2011 email?

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But for the investigation of the Washington Football Team’s chronic atmosphere of workplace misconduct, the NFL wouldn’t be investigating Raiders coach Jon Gruden for an email sent to former Washington executive Bruce Allen. Still, now that the NFL has described the contents of the email as “denigrating, appalling, abhorrent, and contrary to our values of respect and inclusivity,” the NFL has to decide what to do about it.

The Personal Conduct Policy becomes the first place to search for potential grounds for discipline. Nothing in the current policy directly addresses the use of racist language in a communication with a third person, even if a violation from 10 years ago would qualify for discipline.

That said, the policy has a broad catch-all, prohibiting “conduct that undermines or puts at risk the integrity of the NFL, NFL clubs, or NFL personnel.” It would be easy for the league to argue that Gruden’s comments fall within that standard.

Gruden would likely claim, if disciplined under that standard, that it was a private comment not a public statement. The league likely wouldn’t care.

The stronger argument against any type of discipline under the Personal Conduct Policy comes from the fact that Gruden made the comment when he wasn’t employed by any NFL team. The league could then try to claim that Gruden said what he said while working for an NFL broadcast partner, and that the definition of “workplace setting” in the policy pulls those remarks within its purview.

“The workplace setting means any location or conveyance used in connection with NFL activities, including the club facility, training camp, stadium, locker room, location at which a club-sponsored event takes place, and while traveling on team or NFL-related business,” the policy explains. While it would be a bit of a stretch, Gruden sending emails in his role as a high-profile employee of an NFL broadcast partner to a high-profile executive with an NFL team could qualify as behavior occurring within a “workplace setting.”

Ultimately, Gruden’s arguments and defenses may not matter. Just ask Saints coach Sean Payton about that; he was suspended for all of 2012 based on flimsy evidence and no meaningful basis for fighting it. Coaches have no union, and their rights if any flow through the league. Basically, if the league decides to take action against a coach, it will do it — and the coach won’t have many viable options in response. Unless Gruden wants to take a page from former Raiders owner Al Davis and sue the league, Gruden could have a hard time defeating any and all discipline the league may choose to impose, even if the Personal Conduct Policy doesn’t justify it.

The Raiders would have a hard time taking significant action against Gruden, up to and including firing him for cause and shutting off his right to any remaining guaranteed pay. Unless he signed paperwork when he was hired in 2018 promising that he has engaged in no past misbehavior of which the team isn’t aware and if the paperwork also reserves the right to fire him for cause if such behavior later comes to light, the Raiders will be stuck.

Then again, any discipline imposed by the team undoubtedly would be subject to the dispute-resolution procedures in nearly every coaching contract. That term requires the coach to pursue any rights or remedies through a grievance process that will be resolved by the Commissioner.

This, while on the surface it looks like the league’s and team’s options are limited, the absence of a union for coaches and the presence of contracts and policies that stack the deck in the favor of the league and the team will make it difficult for Gruden to defeat any and all punishment that the NFL or the Raiders may choose to impose.

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