“I love the Raiders and don’t want to be a distraction. Thank you to all the Raider Nation players, coaches, staff and fans. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he said in a published statement from the Raider.
Raiders owner Mark Davis tweeted that he had accepted Gruden’s resignation.
Critics had called for Gruden, who has coached the Raiders since the start of the 2018 season, to be fired as the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that in an email from 2011, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith, a Using racially insensitive language, the New York Times reported it checked further emails and found Gruden denouncing women employed as civil servants on the field, a team that designed an openly gay player, and tolerance of protesters National anthem. The Times said the NFL got the emails as part of an investigation that Gruden allegedly was not involved in – a workplace misconduct investigation on the Washington Football team. Many of the emails, covering a seven-year period, were sent to Bruce Allen, then president of the Washington team, who was fired in December 2019, according to the Times.
A league source confirmed to CNN the accuracy of the Times story.
The emails were exposed by the league and presented to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell last week, the source said. The league announced on Friday that it had sent the emails to the Raiders and was waiting for the team to review them with Gruden.
League spokesman Brian McCarthy said on Friday: “The email vilifying DeMaurice Smith from Jon Gruden is appalling, horrific and completely contrary to the values of the NFL. We condemn the statement and regret any harm its publication could cause Mr. Smith or others. “
CNN has again asked Gruden, the NFL and the Raiders for comment.
What the emails said
Gruden was one of the highest-paid coaches in the NFL after signing a 10-year $ 100 million deal with the Raiders, according to salary tracking website Spotrac. He first coached the Raiders from 1998 to 2001, then won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002. At the time, Gruden was 39 and then the youngest coach to win the Super Bowl.
In 2008 he left the Bucs and became a football analyst for ESPN.
Gruden’s news aired while working for ESPN as a color analyst on Monday Night Football, the Times reported.
In one he called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a “P * ssy” and an “F * ggot” according to the Times. In another, he labeled Michael Sam “queer” after the player was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in 2014, and Gruden said the league shouldn’t have pressured the team’s then coach to draft Sam, the Times reported .
Michael Sam publicly announced that he was gay before the draft; after all, he has never played a regular season game in the league. Gruden has been training Carl Nassib, a defensive player for the Raiders, since 2020, who this year became the first active player in league history to announce that he is gay.
Given the content of the emails, Gruden’s credibility would have been lost in the locker room, NFL Network and NFL.com reporter and analyst Ian Rapoport said Tuesday.
“How would he get up in the middle of the room and lead this group of men when several people in this locker room know that he is making fun of or against them in private?” Rapoport said “New Day” on CNN’s.
“It couldn’t work. That partly explains why Jon Gruden stepped down to owner Mark Davis and then his staff last night,” Rapoport said.
On Friday, an NFL spokesman said the email published in the Wall Street Journal was exposed as part of the NFL’s investigation into workplace misconduct with the Washington Football team.
In response to the Wall Street Journal report, Gruden said on Sunday: “All I can say is that I am not a racist.”
He added, “I can’t tell you how sick I am. I apologize again to De Smith, but I feel good about who I am and what I’ve done all my life. I apologize for the insensitive remarks racist intentions with these remarks at all. “
Rich Bisaccia, the coordinator of the special teams and deputy head coach of the Raiders, will be the interim head coach with immediate effect, the team announced.
CNN’s Jill Martin and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.
