The Jon Gruden trade still stings for the Las Vegas Raiders fans, but it wasn’t a decision Al Davis made lightly. In 2002, Davis shipped his head coach to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for four draft picks and $8 million, only to watch Gruden lead the Buccaneers past his own Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII. Now, a voice close to that era is opening up about what really pushed Davis to pull the trigger.

“The final words that John Gruden said to us after the tuck rule game, he said, when we’re in New England, he says, ‘As long as you’re Raiders, they’ll never let you win,’” Lincoln Kennedy said. “That was the last words that John Gruden said to me as a head coach.

“Shortly thereafter, months thereafter, I get a call from Al Davis, come into his office and talk to him on the heels of coming back from a Pro Bowl. And he’s like, ‘I had to do it’. I’m like, ‘What are you talking about, Mr. Davis?’ He said, ‘I had to trade him. I hate it when teams get involved with coaches that are under contract. But at the same time, I asked for everything, and Tampa gave it. I had to let him go.’”

The Raiders looked like a team headed somewhere special, sitting at 10-3 through most of the 2001 season. Then things got shaky. Three straight games slipped away in the final minutes against Tennessee, Denver and the Jets, the kind of losses that make front offices nervous.

Right in the middle of that stretch, Gruden’s agent, Bob LaMonte, quietly agreed to put contract talks on hold until the season wrapped up. Oakland still finished on top of the AFC West and knocked out the Jets in the wild card round. But the run ended painfully, a 16-13 overtime loss to New England in what’s now remembered as the infamous “Tuck Rule” game.

Once the dust settled, Gruden and LaMonte sat down at a local restaurant to go over the team’s latest contract offer. It wasn’t what they expected. The number had dropped from earlier proposals, with several terms crossed out entirely.

Publicly, though, Gruden kept things simple. At his season-ending press conference, he told reporters he was under contract and fully planned to coach out his final year in Oakland.

Meanwhile, down in Tampa Bay, chaos was brewing. The Buccaneers had just fired Tony Dungy, a coach plenty of people respected, without lining up a replacement first. That’s a rough spot for any franchise, especially one that had made the playoffs three years running without ever breaking through. They tried Bill Parcells. They tried Spurrier. Both said no.

Gruden’s name was floating around, but mostly as background noise. Until Al Davis decided to make it real. Then came the call. 1 a.m. on February 18, 2002, and the trade happened.

Tampa Bay gave up first-round picks in 2002 and 2003, second-round picks in 2002 and 2004, and $8 million. Gruden’s salary also more than tripled, jumping to nearly $4 million a year for five years, according to ESPN.

The rest, as they say, became one of the most talked-about coaching trades in NFL history.