NFL found no one other than Jon Gruden to have sent inappropriate emails: Report

The NFL investigation into the Jon Gruden case has found no other current team or league personnel to have sent emails containing racist, homophobic or misogynistic language similar to that of the former Las Vegas Raiders coach, reports in the US media said.

The league “did not identify other areas and other individuals it has to contact at club leadership or league leadership levels,” the Associated Press reported quoting an unnamed source. According to the report, the investigators had collected 650,000 emails 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,” AP quoted the source as saying.

Gruden resigned from the position of the coach of the Raiders on Monday after the denigrating comments expressed in emails written from 2011-18 to then-Washington club executive Bruce Allen were reported. Gruden was an analyst for ESPN at that time.

Allen was fired in December 2019 and would face an investigation if he returns to the league.

The NFL also has categorized comparisons of Gruden’s correspondences with Allen to those by top league counsel Jeff Pash as a mischaracterization. The person said that the league finds those emails “in a different category” as a part of Pash’s job, and “appropriate.”

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 AP report said.

The timeline of when the NFL was made aware of the content of the emails also has come into question. Such knowledge came toward the end of the investigation of the Washington franchise, with the investigating firm viewing the emails as beyond the scope of their probe. When the league became aware of some emails potentially of concern, it began to review those.

(With AP inputs)