Keyshawn Johnson and Jon Gruden go way back. In 2003, when Gruden’s Bucs deactivated the wide receiver for the season, he lit the coach up. “I was never Gruden’s guy,” he said at the time. “He never liked me. I told him I’d rather retire than play for him in 2004.”
So when Gruden was exposed as a complete caveman on Monday, likely ending his NFL head coaching career, Johnson was ready.
“This dude is a fraud,” Johnson said on ESPN Tuesday morning. “He’s selling you on something and you’re buying it. He’s been doing that for years, whether it’s ‘he’s an excellent quarterback coach’. ... Talking behind people’s backs, that was one of his traits in Tampa.” (Gruden played up his QB expertise in various ESPN specials when he worked at the network.)
Johnson’s victory lap started on the radio, where he hosts “Keyshawn, JWill & Max” with former NBA player Jay Williams and Max Kellerman.
“He’s always been a fraud to me,” Johnson, the wide receiver the Jets took with the No. 1 pick in the 1996 draft, said. “From Day 1, he’s been a used car salesman. People bought it because he inherited a championship team built by Tony Dungy and Rich McKay.”
The Raiders traded Gruden to Tampa before the 2002 season after Dungy was fired, when Johnson and the Bucs would go on to win a Super Bowl. “He came in there with a little bit different energy than we had with Tony, and it kind of kicked us over the top for our world championship, which I am grateful for. But at the same time, I also saw through who he was on that journey.”
Gruden resigned as the coach of the Raiders on Monday night after the New York Times reported that he had traded at least seven years’ worth of offensive emails with then-Washington Football Team president Bruce Allen. In the emails, Gruden used racist language to deride DeMaurice Smith, the Black leader of the NFL players’ union, and sexist and anti-gay language to describe NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and then-vice president Joe Biden, among other people.
