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During new head coach Pete Carroll’s introductory press conference Monday, Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis discussed the impact of Tom Brady on the organization and the role he’ll fill with the team. In doing so, Davis recalled the last person in Brady’s position — former Raiders head coach Jon Gruden.
Gruden was forced out in Oct. 2021 following a damaging leak of private emails sent between Gruden and former Washington executive Bruce Allen while Gruden was employed by ESPN.
Davis clearly still harbors ill feelings about the situation, offering up a bizarrely graphic take when discussing the fate of his former coach.
“Bringing in Tom Brady was bringing in somebody on the football side that I had been lacking having here in the organization,” Davis said in a video posted by the Raiders. “Back in I guess it was ’18, with Jon Gruden. He was somebody that I brought in and really expected to be that person on the football side that would bring stability to the organization. He had a 10-year contract and all that, and he had his head chopped off. And we were put in a really bad position as an organization.”
Gruden’s metaphorical decapitation wasn’t unwarranted, considering the content of the leaked emails.
Gruden returned to the Raiders in 2018 after nine years away from coaching, signing an eye-popping 10-year, $100 million contract that included a no-trade clause. Davis and the Raiders were hoping Gruden could work his magic on the organization again, having won two division championships and one berth in the AFC Championship Game during his four years in Oakland from 1998-2001.
Gruden made headlines right away by trading Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper within months of each other, bottoming out the team at 4-12 in his first year back. However, strong drafting allowed the Raiders to begin an upswing, going 7-9 in 2019 and 8-8 in 2020. The Raiders started 2021 with a 3-0 record before dropping their next two games. And that’s where the trouble began.
During an unrelated investigation into the Washington Football Team’s workplace misconduct claims, an NFL investigation uncovered emails Gruden sent to Allen over an eight-year period from 2011-18. Gruden was caught using racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language in the emails directed towards several prominent figures including NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and the NFL’s first openly gay player, Michael Sam.
Gruden apologized for the incident, declaring he wasn’t racist. His running back at the time, Josh Jacobs, also went to bat for his coach, telling NFL.com, “I’ve been around this guy for three years now… What he said was what he said at the end of the day, too. But I definitely trust him — It was 10 years ago — people grow.”
Gruden has not been a head coach since.
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