Chargers' Brandon Staley on Gruden news: Coaching's about trust

Chargers Brandon Staley on Jon Gruden news: Coaching is all about trust

Chargers' Jared Cook (87), catches a pass over Raiders' Denzel Perryman during their game on Oct. 4.

Staff Writer

Oct. 13, 2021 3:33 PM PT

Brandon Staley and Jon Gruden don’t have a lot of history together, though both did play at Dayton.

The Chargers head coach did have something to say Wednesday when asked about the circumstances that led to Gruden and the Las Vegas Raiders parting ways Monday:

“Perspective and trust in this world are really, really difficult to achieve. I think about all the people that were affected by those emails — whether you’re a person of color, whether you’re a person, you know, a gender, your sexual orientation. That’s who I’m thinking about because it’s a sacred mantle for someone to call you coach or someone to call you a leader.

“Trust is really, really hard to achieve in this world. It’s really, really challenging to achieve, especially with people with those groups that I just mentioned. People are really guarded and skeptical of people because of emails like that.

“Kindness and lifting people up and respecting people you don’t know, I just think that that’s such a big part of our thing here … listening to people and learning about people because I think what you’ll discover is that we have so much more in common than not.

“For someone like me, it’s just incumbent upon you to set the example every single day so that people that were talked about in those emails that they don’t need to feel that way, they shouldn’t feel that way.

“Hopefully, all of us can learn from this, that it’s about bringing people together for me, so that people can become the people that they dream about. For me, leading this football team and being someone, hopefully, we can be a light for those people in those emails that not everybody’s like that, that there’s far more people that will love you than the opposite.

“Hopefully, this will be a chance for everybody to come together instead of go apart.”