Mark Davis is reportedly playing the victim card after losing Jon Gruden as his coach.
Gruden resigned as head coach of the Raiders on Monday, after a series of old emails emerged in which he used racist, misogynistic and homophobic language. He became collateral damage of the NFL’s investigation into workplace misconduct within the Washington Football Team.
Davis, the Raiders’ owner, was emotional during the meeting in which Gruden tendered his resignation and believes “influential figures within the league office were intent on forcing Gruden out through calculated media leaks of the emails,” CBS Sports reported on Sunday.
“He thinks the league office is out to get him,” a source who has spoken to Davis told CBS Sports. “He thinks it’s a hit job.”
It remains a mystery as to who leaked the Gruden emails, in which the then-ESPN commentator wrote back and forth to then-Washington president Bruce Allen. Davis hired Gruden in 2018 while Allen was fired after the 2019 season.
More than 650,000 emails were reviewed as part of the NFL’s investigation of WFT, but the majority have not become public. A person familiar with the investigation claimed that the league found no other current team or league personnel to have sent emails containing similar language to what Gruden used in his emails, the Associated Press reported.