The NFL has found no other current team or league personnel to have sent emails containing racist, homophobic or misogynistic language similar to messages written by Jon Gruden that led to his resignation as Las Vegas Raiders coach, a person familiar with the documents told The Associated Press on Friday.
The person said the league “did not identify other areas and other individuals it has to contact at club leadership or league leadership levels.” The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the league has not publicly released what is in the 650,000 emails the independent investigators collected during an investigation of sexual harassment and other workplace conditions at the Washington Football Team.
“The NFL did not identify any problems anywhere near what you saw with Jon Gruden,” the person said. The person did not address any other areas of potential issues found in the emails beyond similarities with Gruden’s comments.
Gruden resigned Monday as Raiders coach after the denigrating comments expressed in emails written from 2011-18 to then-Washington club executive Bruce Allen were reported. Gruden worked as an analyst for ESPN during those years before joining the Raiders in 2018.
The NFL would conduct a probe of Allen, who was fired in December 2019, should he attempt to return to the league, the person said.
The NFL also has categorized comparisons of Gruden’s correspondences with Allen to those by top league counsel Jeff Pash as a mischaracterization.
The emails between Pash and Allen show Pash reassuring Allen on controversies involving the Washington franchise and discussing league issues and other topics, including politics, according to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
The person said that the league finds those emails “in a different category” from Gruden’s and “appropriate,” as its a part of Pash’s job. Pash has been a conduit between the NFL office and teams for years.
There were a number of topics Pash discussed with Allen in emails, but the NFL found the attorney had not been “too chummy” with the Washington team president, nor was there anything that “led to any sort of undue influence that resulted in any gains by the Washington Football Team,” the person said.
That franchise was docked $36 million in salary cap room in 2012 and ’13 by the league, with Pash heavily involved in the probe leading to that discipline.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this story.
