Gruden's emails leave more questions than answers
Peter King and Mike Florio discuss the fallout from Jon Gruden's leaked emails and wonder why and how the Washington Football Team comes out of the situation scot-free.
Video Transcript
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MIKE FLORIO: Time now for more "PFT" on Yahoo Sports, Peter King and Mike Florio discussing the biggest stories in the National Football League. And there is no bigger story now, Peter, than the abrupt resignation of Jon Gruden, which happened on Monday night after even more emails that were harvested from the Washington Football Team investigation, emails Gruden sent to former Washington executive Bruce Allen, were leaked to the media.
It was bad enough on Friday. It got a lot worse on Monday. And it was untenable for Jon Gruden. And he resigns at a time when I think it's fair to suggest that if he hadn't resigned, Mark Davis quite possibly would have fired him.
PETER KING: It's a totally untenable situation. Gruden couldn't continue, obviously, after the contents of those emails were printed first in "The Wall Street Journal" and then in "The New York Times" on Monday. And Mike, I think there are three points to make coming out of this. Number one, you know, Jon Gruden, for those who would say they're just emails, they're just words, and all that, you cannot coach in this environment today when your players are looking at you.
He has the first openly gay player on his team. There's absolutely no way when he calls Roger Goodell the gutter term for a homosexual person-- there's no way that Carl Nassib and probably many people in that locker room could look at Jon Gruden anymore. That's number one.
Number two, where is the outrage? And where is the demand for full disclosure on the Washington Football Team emails, on the emails about Daniel Snyder? Do we think that all of the emails that were horrible in this trove of emails solely relate to Jon Gruden? That's why there's something about this that just stinks. It just does. Daniel Snyder skates. That's what he does. He skates in this whole thing.
And I think the third thing is, you know, Jon Gruden, he's a colorful character. He's a great, interesting figure in NFL history. But the fact is, Mike, he was three games over 500 when he coached Tampa Bay. He was three games over 500 now at the end of his career when he coached the Raiders. And I'm not trying to dance on Jon Gruden when he's down or anything like that.
But Jon Gruden, in many ways, was a creation of Jon Gruden. And he was not a great football coach. And I will really dislike it if we come down and we start saying, well, you know, man, this great coach was brought down by emails. This coach was brought down by emails.
MIKE FLORIO: Well, and the bottom line is this, Peter, I said late last season as we were trying to figure out which jobs would come open because, inevitably, multiple coaches are fired, that if Jon Gruden was working for anyone other than Mark Davis or if he was anyone other than Jon Gruden, he'd be on the hot seat based upon his performance or lack thereof during his three seasons at the time with the Raiders. But for whatever reason, Mark Davis was never going to fire his buddy. And it just shows you what it took. And think of it this way, the Raiders had other emails on Friday.
The NFL sent these other emails to the Raiders. And I think the NFL just kind of took a step back and said, hey, mark, you know, what are you going to do about this? And it was only after Gruden loudly defended himself and Davis didn't do anything that the league leaked more. The league kept leaking more. This was not "The Wall Street Journal" and "The New York Times" scurrying around in dumpsters or hacking computer systems. Someone from the league gave these emails to reporters with the idea that they were going to be leaked.
And to get to your point about the Washington Football Team, you're absolutely right. And I've already been banging on this and will continue to do so. And this is not a defense of Jon Gruden. But it's not fair to only show us a few of the cards when the deck doesn't have 52, the deck has 650,000.
PETER KING: Mike, you know, we have to know what happens after hearing about Gruden. And look, I don't know how Andrew Beaton, and Ken Belson, and these reporters got these emails. I don't know.
MIKE FLORIO: Come on, Peter, they handed them to them.
PETER KING: And so I'm not ascribing anything--
MIKE FLORIO: They handed them to them. They wanted it out. This is an agenda by the league to take down Gruden. And now they have to be fair as it relates to, as you said, Dan Snyder and possibly others. That's it for now. We'll see you next time.
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