Last weekend, Jon Gruden approached his team, after The Wall Street Journal published a 10-year-old email of his, to try to own his mistake. He told the players the message in the email—the one that referred to NFLPA chief DeMaurice Smith with a racial trope—was wrong. And that there was no place for it. And he apologized for it.
He then turned the team’s focus toward the Bears.
The Raiders would lose the game, and Gruden would lose his job a day later, with a follow-up report from The New York Times revealing more offensive emails of Gruden’s, emanating from the league’s investigation into the Washington Football Team.