Silver Minings: Jon Gruden “letting the dust settle” in Las Vegas

A quote from HBO’s Real Sports Podcast makes it seem like the coach could return …

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden resigned on Monday, October 11th after a string of his inappropriate emails were leaked.

Gruden said that he did not want to be a distraction to the Raiders anymore, and the team responded by getting a big victory in Denver due in large part to their best offensive performance of the season.

Naturally, chatter has picked up about who will be the Silver and Black’s next head coach, and understandably, Gruden has been left out of that discussion. However, the coach might have different plans that could throw a wrench into the discussion.

HBO’s Real Sports Podcast emailed out a press release for its latest episode in which Andrea Kremer, who profiled Raiders’ owner Mark Davis on Real Sports recently, was quoted stating:

“Speaking of Gruden, Maggie Burbank, who produced the (HBO) story that we just did on Mark Davis, she actually called Gruden and he picked up the phone, much to I think her surprise. And he’s still in Las Vegas.

“He says he’s letting the dust settle. He said, ‘People who know me know what I stand for for 58 years. I have a resume of 58 years.’ He said, ‘The truth will come out.’ It’s certainly cryptic.”

What exactly Gruden means by “the truth will come out” is unknown and rather interesting. It’s hard to imagine anything will be brought forth that will excuse his actions, but there’s little to no doubt that some more scandals might emerge as the curtain gets peeled back more and more on this situation.

As far as the football field goes, it sounds like the coach seems to think he’ll be back on the sidelines after more time passes. That’d be a bit of a surprise, especially if it happens in Las Vegas, but the NFL does have a weird – and sometimes disturbing – way of forgiving past transgressions for players and coaches who are good at their jobs.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this all plays out…

In other Raiders’ links:

• Feds looking into Gruden emails: the U.S. House of Representative’s Oversight Committee is probing the NFL to release more information from its findings of workplace misconduct by the Washington Football team, per The Washington Post.
• Grambling State band to play at halftime: the Raiders announced that the “World Famed Tiger Marching Band” will be in Vegas this weekend.
• Solomon Thomas sacks = money for charity: the defensive tackle is donating $8,000 per sack to his nonprofit The Defensive Line, which works to stop suicide, particularly among youths.
• Immediate impact for Trufant?: both Rich Bisaccia and Gus Bradley referred to newly-signed Desmond Trufant as the team’s third corner.
• Calm sideline w/o Gruden: “Man, the sideline was just so, it was like, it wasn’t no anxiety. It was weird. It was like everybody was calm, you didn’t have somebody cussing at you, or going crazy at the refs. None of that. Something bad happened and it like, ‘OK, next play,’” said running back Josh Jacobs.