This weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open took aim at the scandal surrounding former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who was forced to resign last week following the discovery of racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments he made in emails while working as an ESPN commentator.
The sketch featured SNL‘s Colin Jost as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who defended the league by declaring, “I know our Black coaches would agree. Both of them.”
He then introduced Gruden — new cast member James Austin Johnson — who begged people not to judge him on “the one email I sent 10 years ago, or the 20 emails I sent last Tuesday.”
Gruden then turned the podium over to Raiders owner Mark Davis — played by Alex Moffat — who addressed his unusual bowl haircut by noting, “I’ve heard all the jokes about my hair and how it looks like Donald Trump’s haircut gave me a haircut.”
The sketch went on to feature a series of people accepting, then quickly resigning, the Raiders head coach job over problematic statements in their past.
Chris Redd played former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was fired for kneeling during the national anthem before the games as a silent protest against systemic racism and police brutality. He followed by noting, “So much stuff coming out about [how] the NFL is maybe racist. Huh, I wonder if anyone tried to warn people about this before.”
Moffat’s Davis then announced a “solution that makes everyone happy. Someone even Twitter can get behind,” and introduced LeVar Burton, played by Kenan Thompson, as the new coach.
The host of the PBS kids’ show Reading Rainbow, seemingly angry over losing the Jeopardy! hosing duties to Mayim Bialik, told the actress to “suck on that” before breaking into a song that reworked the Reading Rainbow theme song.
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