Paul Domowitch Stands By His Jon Gruden Report
Despite yelling by loudmouthed sports talk radio hosts who think they are funnier and smarter than they are and accuse genuine reporters of making up very forthright reports about the coaching search, Paul Domowitch, on CBS Sports Zone last night, doubled down on his report that Jon Gruden, despite his obvious denial, is or was indeed interested in the Eagles’ job, but that the Eagles are “lukewarm” on it:
“He was interested in the job. He had one of his intermediaries contact the Eagles. They’re lukewarm to the idea. A) They don’t know if he’s serious. B) They’re not sure he can work within a framework that includes Howie Roseman. They haven’t said no to the idea, they haven’t said yes. They’ve basically put it on the back burner, they prefer to go with a coordinator.”
No doubt in my mind that if Domo had been proven so wrong, as some would have you believe, that he would’ve agreed to go on TV and talk about it (unless he just wanted to sit across from Lesley Van Arsdall). Does that mean it’ll happen? No, probably not. But does that mean Domo was just making shit up to garner attention? No, not at all. Domo’s been with the Daily News for a long time and has covered football for, like, 30 years. He doesn’t need to pull Darren DeGaetano stunts to noticed. There’s no reason to doubt him when he says that Gruden, at the very least, sent word to Jeffrey Lurie that he’d be interested. That may be all there is, but there’s no reason not to report it just because it’s a long shot.
UPDATE: Just found this– but fun little underbelly to the story: Howard Eskin was the one who got Gruden to say he’s not interested. In 2011, Eskin accused Domo of stealing quotes from his radio show and Domo replied by calling Eskin a “scumbag” and basically threatened to beat the ever living shit out of him.