Jon Gruden, the Super Bowl-winning coach who was pushed out of the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021, is reportedly set to return to the NFL broadcast booth for a preseason game, even as his lawsuit accusing the league of a "malicious and orchestrated campaign" to destroy his career edges closer to trial.
Ira Kaufman of JoeBucsFan reported that Gruden is slated to call an NFL preseason game next month and is expected to handle play-by-play duties. Fox News Digital reported on the development, noting that Gruden's agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The broadcast assignment, if confirmed, would mark Gruden's most visible professional football role since he parted ways with the Raiders during his third year of a 10-year contract. His departure followed the surfacing of emails, sent during his earlier tenure as an ESPN analyst and Monday Night Football broadcaster, that contained racist, sexist, and homophobic language.
Gruden has made no secret of his desire to get back into football. In public remarks last July, he laid out his intentions in characteristically blunt fashion:
"Hopefully I'm not done. I'm about to make a comeback. I don't care if I coach at Jones Junior High. I'm going to coach again. I'm still coaching. I'm just not on a team officially, but I do have some private assignments I work on, and I wear some gear when I'm watching the games that nobody knows about who I'm pulling for."
He also addressed the coaching pipeline he helped build over the years, pointing to former assistants and protégés now running NFL teams:
"Hopefully, some of these guys that fell off my branch, if you say it that way, maybe they can hire me 'cause I'm looking for a job."
In the meantime, Gruden has stayed connected to the game through film study-style interviews with prospective quarterbacks for Barstool Sports. He also squashed reports linking him to a role with the New York Jets, saying he did not receive "anything" from the organization.
A preseason broadcast gig may not be the sideline return Gruden wants, but it puts his voice back inside an NFL production, a step that would have seemed unlikely in the immediate aftermath of his 2021 exit.
The broadcast report arrives against the backdrop of a legal fight that has not gone the league's way. After leaving the Raiders, Gruden sued the NFL, alleging that the league orchestrated the selective leak of his emails to force him out. His lawsuit, filed in November 2021, names the NFL and accuses the league of deliberately targeting him while shielding others whose correspondence was part of the same broader investigation.
The NFL pushed to move the case into private arbitration, the league's preferred venue for disputes, where proceedings are closed and Commissioner Roger Goodell or his designee typically presides. A Clark County District Court judge, Nancy Allf, rejected that bid. AP News reported that Judge Allf found the alleged selective leaking of only Gruden's documents could constitute evidence of "specific intent" to harm him, a significant legal threshold.
The NFL appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court then scheduled oral arguments for November 7 in Las Vegas to hear the league's challenge. That hearing produced a ruling that Gruden's case could proceed in court rather than arbitration. In a subsequent petition, the NFL asked the court to reconsider.
The court said no, unanimously.
That unanimous denial strips the NFL of its best procedural shield. The case now appears headed toward open court, where discovery, depositions, and testimony would unfold in public view rather than inside the league's own arbitration apparatus.
The NFL's arbitration system has drawn criticism for years. The league's standard contracts route most disputes through a process the league controls, and the commissioner, or someone he appoints, often serves as the final decision-maker. For a plaintiff like Gruden, who alleges the league itself targeted him, the idea of having that same league adjudicate his claims borders on the absurd.
The Nevada Supreme Court's rulings cut against that arrangement. By keeping the case in state court, the justices ensured that Gruden's allegations, including the central claim that the NFL selectively disclosed his emails while keeping others' correspondence under wraps, will be tested in a forum the league does not control.
That distinction matters. If Gruden's claim is accurate, the emails that ended his coaching career were not the product of a neutral investigation but a targeted leak designed to produce exactly the outcome it did: his resignation, his public disgrace, and his exile from the sport.
The emails that surfaced in 2021 were sent years earlier, during Gruden's time at ESPN. Their content, characterized as racist, sexist, and homophobic, was indefensible on its face, and Gruden has not attempted to defend the language itself. What he has challenged is how and why those emails became public when they did, and why only his correspondence was disclosed.
The broader email trove was part of an NFL investigation into the Washington Commanders' workplace culture. Hundreds of thousands of emails were reviewed. Yet only Gruden's were leaked to the press. That selective disclosure is the foundation of his lawsuit.
Gruden won the Super Bowl coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2003. He spent years as one of ESPN's most recognizable football voices before returning to coaching with the Raiders. When the emails hit, he was three years into a 10-year deal, a contract that signaled the Raiders' long-term commitment and Gruden's own investment in building a program.
All of it evaporated in a matter of days.
The preseason broadcast assignment, the Barstool Sports work, and the public statements about coaching all point in the same direction: Gruden is not going away. He is rebuilding his professional presence one step at a time, even as his legal case against the NFL moves toward what could be a revealing trial.
The specific preseason game Gruden is reportedly set to call has not been identified. Neither the network nor the teams involved have been disclosed. Fox News reported that Gruden's agency had not responded to inquiries, leaving several details unconfirmed.
Open questions remain. Who leaked the emails? Why were only Gruden's disclosed? What will discovery reveal about the NFL's internal deliberations? Those answers may come in a courtroom the league fought hard to avoid.
The NFL wanted this dispute handled quietly, on its own turf, under its own rules. Two Nevada courts, and now a unanimous state supreme court, said otherwise. If the league has nothing to hide about how Jon Gruden's emails found their way into public view, an open trial should be no problem at all.
