Jon Gruden’s full complaint against NFL, Roger Goodell

Posted by Michael David Smith on November 12, 2021, 5:15 PM EST
Chicago Bears v Las Vegas Raiders
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The full complaint of the lawsuit that former Raiders coach Jon Gruden filed against the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell is available here.

Gruden filed the lawsuit in Nevada state court, alleging that the league and Goodell attempted to destroy Gruden’s reputation and career with their actions in selectively leaking certain emails sent by Gruden and uncovered during an unrelated investigation of the Washington Football Team.

The NFL is accused of breaking its own precedent by refusing to release documents and provide full transparency, and instead giving some of Gruden’s emails to the media while hiding all other emails involved in the investigation.

We’ll have much more analysis of Gruden’s lawsuit here at PFT.

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30 responses to “Jon Gruden’s full complaint against NFL, Roger Goodell”

  4. Fortunately, we fans have a dilligent attorney explaining things to us in ways Almost Everyone can understand.
    “The NFL”‘s attempts to complicate things unravel on this site.
    Gotta wonder how many writers from other sites Come Here to get their info and insight.

  8. Is there a law against “selectively leaking” emails?
    If those Grudens emails went to Bruce Allen via his team email, then Gruden will probably lose, as the server that collected those emails is team property and not considered “private”, no matter who it’s addressed to.
    Even if someone on the Washington FB team ‘leaked’ the emails either to the NFL or someone in the NFL office doesn’t matter.
    This should be a good lesson for all of us.
    Servers are forever. You might delete them locally, but they’re never really ‘deleted’.

    js

  9. He’s got a case. Only emails that were concerning Gruden were leaked. There’s no way that’s a coincidence. If this gets to court some people in the NFL front office are going to have some hard questions to answer. I’m sure there will also be a subpoena for all emails–which the NFL won’t want to do so I’m sure a lot of them will disappear.

    Something tells me Roger is holding these over people’s (owner’s) heads lest he release more emails that would get an owner in trouble. There was definitely something shady going on and whether you like Gruden or not he does have rights.

  14. ” Gruden filed the lawsuit in Nevada state court, alleging that the league and Goodell attempted to destroy Gruden’s reputation and career with their actions…….”

    Gruden’s reputation was destroyed when he wrote the emails !!!

  16. This is great news. I am anticipating several owners being punted as well as Good-hell. This will get very dirty. Bravo!

  17. PFT cited as a footnote (19) in the lawsuit. Congratulations?

    How common is it to have six lawyers for the plaintiff of a civil suit? It’s harder to become an obscenely wealthy attorney on a six-way split.

  18. His choice of words. He said those things. I’ve lost all of what little respect I’ve ever had for him.

    Don’t be mad that the words were leaked.

    Be mad about the words.

  19. NFL commission will always have the ‘Integrity of the game’ shield to protect himself. Did that with the lawsuit with Brady.

  20. Nobody would like to see Goodell get torched more than I would, but this Gruden lawsuit isn’t going to do it. The complaint describes all the bad things the NFL did, but the problem is that you then have to add to that: “and that caused emails that I actually sent to be made public, which made me look so bad I had to resign.” No matter how rotten it was of the NFL to do this (assuming they did), it’s a huge leap to successfully claim big bucks in damages for the leaking of true information.

  21. Misguided by Gruden. He really is as dumb as he looks. His best play was to lay low and hope he could come back one day. This will end with him not getting any money and never working in football again. Does he really believe the NFL left a paper trail? Mind you, these are the 31 owners he’s going against, not Goodell. Goodell is just the mouthpiece.

  22. If Goodell is deposed (which I doubt will ever happen) can they put it on pay per view?? I would pay to see a real attorney question him instead of sportswriters with softball questions..

  25. Without proof that nfl leaked the emails or proof that nfl pressured Davis and threatened to tease more emails, the only things of any substance here are “negligent hiring” and “negligent supervision” as those can be shown to be true without proof of who leaked the emails or proof that they threatened Davis to release more emails.

  26. Jon Gruden should have hired Houston Sleaze Attorney Buzbee He must be good it’s said he is a billionare.

  27. Jon Gruden was the biggest drawing card, and perhaps the best revenue producer for the NFL. He certainly promoted the NFL with more success than anyone since the likes of John Madden and Howard Cosell. He signed a large contract, but after a couple years, it was just average. I have no doubt the Raiders, who Gruden turned from a laughing stock to one of the best teams, were getting ready to tear up his contract and make him the highest paid coach. Probably would had signed a deal in the neighborhood of $250 million. But also, John Madden is making a mint from his Madden Football game. The likely successor to Madden would have been Jon Gruden. I’d have to see what kind of revenue Madden has generated from his Madden Football games, but Gruden was probably in line to generate the same, if not more, after he retired. The league cost Gruden in excess of $1 billion dollars, plus damage to his reputation which is probably worth another billion. Hopefully Gruden will be paid what was taken from him. I love the NFL, but this is America, and we have laws. You can’t wrong a person so horribly and not pay.

  29. Okay lets just boil this down to what it is. Gruden’s lawsuit is not about what he said in the emails, he has paid the price for his words. This is about why, and who appeared to have an ax to grind.

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