Getty Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden
If there was any question whether or not the frustration in the Oakland Raiders locker room has hit its peak yet, we may have just gotten the answer. After the team suffered another ugly loss on Sunday, this time against the rival Los Angeles Chargers, tempers had apparently boiled over. So much so, that players were sounding off and didn’t care who heard.
As Matt Schneidman of the Bay Area News Group revealed, one Raiders veteran said to another that he has to get the “f*** outta here.”
Either the reporters in earshot heard the veteran talking about making his way to dinner reservations, or this is incredibly bad. After the 20-6 loss to the Chargers in Week 10, the Raiders moved to 1-8 on the season and have been outscored 54-9 over the past two games. This is their fifth-straight loss and each one has been by double-digits.
Jon Gruden Tension Growing
Following trades which involved sending Khalil Mack to the Chicago Bears before the season and then Amari Cooper to the Dallas Cowboys, rumblings of tensions being high are swirling. Tack on the release of veteran Bruce Irvin and it’s apparent the players aren’t exactly buying into whatever it is that new head coach Jon Gruden is selling.
Just recently, one member of the Raiders spoke with The Athletic’s Vic Tafur (with anonymity) and called the Cooper trade a “knockout punch.”
“The Mack trade was a real stiff jab,” another [player] said. “But the Cooper one was like a knockout punch, especially because we had just walked back in the door from the bye. We didn’t want to believe it was coming, and Coach said we weren’t going to trade him.”
There are no signs of this situation improving, so it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of this season plays out. Gruden obviously wants to get his own players in the door, but he’ll have to make it through the next seven games with the group he has before that process starts.
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Raiders Player to Teammate: ‘I Gotta Get the F*** Outta Here’