This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Today's Tuesday, October 12th. A little bit of a change of plans today.

Obviously, most of you have heard about the news regarding Raiders head coach John Gruden.

It was announced last night that he is resigning, put out a statement. The Raiders also released that news.

This happened shortly after a New York Times report published details about a series of emails from Gruden that included homophobic, misogynistic, and racist remarks that followed emails that were also released during a Wall Street Journal report last week. Gruden has resigned as the coach of the Raiders, and to talk about that story and what comes next. I'm pleased to welcome our Raiders, Writers, at the Athletic, Victa, and Tashan Reid. Guys, thank you very much for doing this.

I know that you've had a lot on your plates here in the last 12 hours or so.

All good.

It's all good, man. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. So, Deshawn, let's go back to last week when the first report from the Wall Street Journal came out, which included Gruden using a racist trope to describe Demari Smith, who was the executive director and the NFL PA.

Gruden issued an apology, but he was allowed to coach against the Bears on Saturday. using a racist trope to describe DeMari Smith, who is the executive director and the NFLPA.

Gruden issued an apology, but he was allowed to coach against the Bears on Sunday.

What was your reaction to the immediate response from the organization to that first report?

And would you surprise that Gruden actually did get to coach on Sunday against Chicago?

No, I wasn't surprised that he got to coach just off of the timing of it. I think, you know, for one, with the story coming out Friday, seemed very synchronized because it came out shortly after Gruden finished speaking for that day. And so we didn't have a chance to ask him any questions about it. And the Raiders never have, you know, availability before game days along with many other teams. And so, you know, once it came out that they did receive additional emails, I figured something else will come out at some point, but it seemed like they wanted to take their time, kind of go through

it, investigate, you know, given what we know now, I mean, it should have hit them pretty immediately there on Friday when they got all of those details. But it didn't shock me, given that that was the only one that became public that he did go on and continue to coach on Sunday. It's not to say that obviously that was, you know, a very clearly racist remark. But it was sort of some room in there for them to say, you know, it was 10 years ago.

You know, it was a one-time outburst. You know, he was angry. He hasn't said that kind of thing since then. And that's all the public knew at that point. So it was very easy to kind of massage at going into the game. And so it didn't surprise me at that point. But obviously, in retrospect, that was a mistake.

And we know that there was much more coming.

And Vic, you wrote today that you thought the league didn't want him to coach in that game. And they clearly had a hand in the report that was published on Monday. Can you shine a little bit more light on the communication maybe between the league and the Raiders? Because Davis said on Friday they would review the email along with the other materials provided by the league.

So what sort of role did the league play here and what sort of response do you think it wanted from Mark Davis, even as soon as Friday?

Yeah, that last phrase definitely, I remember on Friday reading the statement, definitely got my attention because you're wondering what else they have to review.

And I think we don't know exactly what they gave mark davis on Friday when they gave him all the stuff

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