Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has never been one to bite his tongue. Whether he is explaining why his team won’t boycott practice sessions in the name of racial injustice or giving an honest assessment of Dwayne Haskins as a football player, he generally keeps it pretty real.
It was more of the same this week.
In a session with the media, Tomlin offered this thoughts on Jon Gruden’s resignation from his post as the Las Vegas Raiders head coach.
Gruden resigned after a number of his racist, homophobic and misogynistic emails leaked out as part of a league investigation into the Washington Football Team.
“I’m just saddened by it,” Tomlin said of the situation. “I’m saddened for the Raiders organization, I’m saddened for the people that were offended by it, I’m saddened for Coach Gruden. It’s a sad commentary. And that’s really the only opinion that I care to share at this juncture.”
Prior to becoming the Steelers head coach, Tomlin worked under Gruden and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for four years as a defensive backs coach. In the process, Tomlin won a Super Bowl alongside Gruden in 2002 and has respected him as a coach ever since.
Gruden’s removal from his post and the ensuing media circus surrounding it has had extremely significant consequences.
ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter and Gruden’s own son, Deuce, are just two of the first parties to feel the reverberations from the email scandal that took down the now-former Raiders coach, but they likely won’t be the last.
The NFL has reportedly collected more than 650,000 emails as part of its investigation, and there’s no telling what the next domino to drop will be. Stay tuned. This promises to get interesting.
More must-reads: