Tony Dungy is desperately trying to clarify some earlier comments of what he said about Jon Gruden in the wake of his firing.
During NBC’s NFL coverage Sunday night, Dungy and Mike Tirico weighed in on Gruden’s racist emails regarding player’s union head DeMaurice Smith from 2011 that had become news late last week.
“What Jon Gruden did in that (racist) email — definitely insensitive, definitely inappropriate, definitely immature — I thought he attacked the character of a man,” Dungy said Sunday. But he apologized for it. He said it wasn’t racially motivated. I have to believe him. I think this was an incident that was 10 years ago. He apologized. I think we need to accept that apology and move on.”
Tirico added this thoughts.
“I think if I’m being honest with the audience, I should weigh in a little bit here,” Tirico began. “I was with Jon at that time — seven years as my partner on ‘Monday Night Football.’ I probably know Jon better than anybody in the league on a personal level. He said it right — he was ashamed by the comments in the email. The comments in the email are wrong.
“But, my experience kind of parallels Tim Brown, who played for Jon. [Brown] said he never experienced or saw anything that would say Jon was racist in any way. That was exactly the experience I had, those seven years of traveling, three days together on the road together every week.”
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Less than 24 hours after that, the New York Times dropped a whole new batch of offensive Gruden emails. Naturally, what Dungy beforehand came back to light. Dungy tweeted on Tuesday morning, saying that his comments Sunday night were based on the assumption that Gruden’s comments were an isolated incident.
Social Media still had much to say:
