“He’s always been a fraud to me. From day one, he’s been a used car salesman, and people bought it.”
Former Tampa Bay wideout Keyshawn Johnson, referring to who else but former Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who once, long before he brought his raspy loudmouth drama back to the Raiders to the modest tune of $100 million, coached Johnson’s 2002 Super Bowl-winning team — a team Gruden gets all the credit for, but Johnson claims he merely inherited from Tony Dungy and Rich McKay.
Move over Urby, there’s a new Number One NFL Skeezeball! (Non Dan Snyder division)
Look, I know you’ve heard more than you could ever possibly want to hear about Racist Chucky and his questionable email etiquette, but we would be remiss if we let such abject rottenness pass without comment.
The thing about this situation is that absolutely no one thinks this is some kind of anomaly, or that Gruden is a single bad seed that needs to be rooted out of the culture so that the true pearls beneath the crud can shine once and for all. The vast majority of the people in the NFL with any kind of power — namely a bunch of toothless liver spots who have all at one time in their lives worn blackface to a party, and whose accountants have ever-expanding line items for hookers, harassment lawsuits, and cutting-edge ED treatment — are right in line with Gruden’s spittle-laced misogyny, homophobia, racism, and general shittiness, and heartily endorse it behind closed doors. And most of the people they employ, from the coaches to the announcers to the players, are just variations of the same retrograde attitudes jacked up on HGH and Trump-roids.
Gruden is the norm, not the exception. He was just stupid (and arrogant) enough to permanently commit the evidence of his seething soul-rot to an email server. And worse yet, the WFT’s email server — thusly, forever linking himself to a vile organization so full of malignant incompetence that every “f-slur” and racial epithet and Fox News dog whistle talking point was bound to come out whenever the inevitable misconduct investigation was triggered.
Even if he realized the folly of his indiscretion, he didn’t care. He figured he was too powerful, too essential, too untouchable for it to matter. And to no one’s surprise, he figured wrong. Who could have imagined that the guy whose entire brand is pretending like it’s still 1997 and who, just by way of one example, traded away Khalil Mack right before his most game-wrecking season and who in 2021 remains PFF’s Number 6 overall player (sandwiched between Davante Adams and Tom Brady) might be too myopic and swole-headed to see what’s right in front of his face? (To be fair, edge rusher Maxx Crosby is playing out of his mind, but Mack is the kind of force that elevates an entire defense and changes the culture for the better wherever he goes).
It is unclear why Gruden’s emails were the only ones leaked out of 650,000 documents accrued in the 10-month long investigation of the Washington Fuck Trumpets, or who exactly leaked them (I think those who buy into some sort of larger conspiracy against Gruden give the NFL far too much credit for being competent enough to pull such a thing off). The emails are indubitably appalling and worthy of their subsequent consequences, but pale in comparison to the sheer onslaught of horrendous deeds turned up in the wider investigation (widespread abuse, harassment, and exploitation of female employees, all endorsed by Snyder, and deeply ingrained in the culture of the team). Certainly, if Gruden’s emails inhabit the bloody, shrieking Fifth Ring of Hell, Snyder’s entire being is deeply ensconced in the icy lake of the Ninth, no?
Gruden was forced to resign because he was the throbbing whitehead protruding above a sprawling subdermal infection. He was drawing attention to too many others around him — those who may not necessarily run their franchises like Jeffrey Epstein running a frat house, but who casually endorse despicable shit like eugenics, conversion therapy, and putting kids in cages — and he had to be publicly lanced before the damage could spread any further. Like Waystar/Royco on Succession when the New York article exposed the tip of the scandal iceberg (death, rape, embezzlement, corruption) in the company’s cruise division (yes, I did a recent S2 rewatch before S3 debuted on Sunday), the NFL chose to “condemn and move on,” in hopes that the rest of the league’s open sores would be left to fester in the shadows, an open secret that nobody wants to look at any closer than they have to.
Gruden had to go, and it’s good that he is gone. He’s a rancid pus balloon. He has been a prominent face in the NFL for far too long, selling his brand of bass ackwards macho pragmatism (“Just Grind, Baby”) to any sucker who thinks analytics are for f-slurs and kneeling for justice is worse than shooting unarmed black people in the back. Of course, the question is always there: If we remove everyone in the NFL who says racist and homophobic shit, who assaults women, who exploits others, who is morally and ethically bankrupt, who voted for the likes of Trump or Kanye or Jorgensen, who is just generally shitty, who do we have left? Like three kickers, a Seattle hot dog vendor, and maybe, I dunno… Ryan Fitzpatrick?
I’m absolutely not excusing any of the above. In fact, what I’m trying to say is that the NFL is a gargantuan shithole filled with charlatans, greedheads, fart sniffers, anti-vaxers, roid ragers, failsons, wife beaters, kid beaters, bigots, rapists, Nazis, morons, psychopaths, and wannabe plantation owners, and that pushing one of them out to sea changes absolutely nothing about the culture. It has always been morally bankrupt and it always will be.
The NFL’s only real redeeming factor is the sport itself. And to our collective chagrin, it is such a goddamn unbelievably great product that no matter how ghastly the company selling it gets, we have a hard time looking away. Try as they might, they cannot dilute the magic of a horizontal Adam Thielen TD catch or Trevon Diggs snagging seven interceptions in his first six games this season. If they ever do manage to make the sport itself less appealing (boy do they try!) then the whole mega super mothership pus balloon is gonna burst and we’re all going to get caught in the flood.
Until then, keep throwing Thielen the ball while he levitates six inches off the ground, and keep the f-slurs to yourself, fuckos.
“We weren’t desperate… We were just a little bit off.”
Chargers coach Brandon Staley, who has been making Riverboat Ron look like a miserly old banker who only invests in blue chip stocks. In Week 5 Staley set the NFL abuzz with fervent chatter when he put his foot on the gas against Cleveland and never let up, eschewing punts and field goals by going for it on fourth down and converting four times. These days, NFL coaches are adhering more to analytics and win probabilities and going for it on fourth more than ever, but Staley was doing it in situations where nobody ever goes for it unless they are trailing in the fourth quarter: on 4th and 7 and 4th and 8 in field goal range, and on 4th and 2 at their own 24. Turns out they needed all those points, because they barely hung on to beat the Browns 47-42 in the preeminent barn-burner of the season.
Of course, it’s easier to make those calls when the guy you are handing the ball to is Justin Herbert. After last week, the Chargers were 7 for 7 on fourth down conversions, an unheard of conversion rate (and it turns out, unsustainable). Subsequently, in Week 6, when the points weren’t coming so easily and the Chargers were down multiple scores against the Ravens, they went for it another four times, including twice from inside their own territory. This time they only converted once. It ended up making a bad beatdown into a worse one and making Staley perhaps look more reckless than brilliant this time around. “Going for it” is an all or nothing prospect, like pushing all your chips to the center in poker. You better be able to back it up or you’re going home with ringing ears and empty pockets. Staley didn’t waver afterwards, however, and made it clear he will continue to stay aggressive. It’s the style he likes to play and he feels he has the personnel to back it up. Swing for the fences, I say. Play for the win. You love to see it. Even when it means falling into quicksand and never coming out. Hell, even quicksand can be entertaining in its own right.
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