Immediately after ESPN let him go, Ryan Clark didn’t accuse the network. Sure, Clark had already spoken publicly: He offered prayers for colleagues who had also lost their jobs. A day later, he posted a workout video and reflected on starting over. Through all of it, he never challenged the version of events surrounding his own exit, even as reports, internal memos and outside speculation began filling in the blanks for him.

ESPN had described sweeping job cuts tied largely to its NFL Network integration. Reports framed his departure as part of broader layoffs. Another suggested he hadn’t even been forced off NFL Live. Clark had let each version circulate for days. When he finally addressed everything on The Pivot, he rejected nearly every public explanation at once.

“Let me put this to bed,” Clark said on The Pivot podcast. “I wasn’t laid off. I was fired, right? They’re using layoffs as a cover and a camouflage for what they already intended on doing, but there was no cause for it, right? So because there was no cause for it, you couldn’t just fire me, so you had to wait for the layoff so you could camouflage it and veil it, right? But here’s the other thing. If I was laid off like everybody else, they came out on Tuesday. Mine came out on Friday.”

Ryan Clark showed up to NFL Live on Monday like it was any other day at the office. But he was let go before the show was taped fully. ESPN was expected to break the news to Clark on Tuesday morning. However, since there had been reports from the media, the network did not want to take any chances with Clark finding out from elsewhere, according to Sports Business Journal’s Richard Deitsch. Then came the cleanup narrative.

TMZ reported that Clark “wasn’t forced” off the show, framing it as a mutual decision both sides were fine with. Clark wasn’t going to let that stand.

“I wasn’t forced? I ask, ‘should I be done now?'” he wrote on X. “The answer was ‘yes.'”

According to the internal memo circulated by ESPN among employees, the network claimed the acquisition of NFL Network had forced it to make some “difficult decisions.”

“While most of the job impacts are tied to the acquisition, we will also notify colleagues in other parts of the company today that their positions have been impacted,” the memo, sent by ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro, read. “We are committed to treating employees with compassion and respect and to providing support as they navigate this transition.”

He also used his own podcast, The Pivot, to shut down another theory floating around: that friction with co-host Peter Schrager played a role. Clark said that’s not what happened, insisting the two are on good terms.

Clark also pushed back against another report that gained traction after his dismissal, that last season’s heated exchange with Peter Schrager ultimately cost him his job. While reports suggested the incident became a turning point with ESPN executives, Clark insisted the disagreement had long since been resolved.

“Me and Peter don’t have an issue,” he said. “I would think if you asked him right now, obviously after what went on with us, there’s been nobody that’s been nicer to him.”

Clark then shared details he said viewers never saw behind that exchange. According to him, ESPN had originally scheduled him to appear on both Get Up and First Take that week. After flying to New York, however, he discovered he had been replaced on one of the Get Up shows without anyone informing him beforehand.

“Along with some other people, we built Get Up. That show was dying. Your original idea didn’t work,” Clark said. “So it was Dan (Orlovsky), and it was Marcus (Spears), and it was ‘Culture Wednesday’ with me and Domonique (Foxworth). That’s why that show lasted to be what it is that you’re turning it into now. And the people who I built that with, y’all just couldn’t call me and just tell me?”

Clark said producers later told him it wasn’t typical for analysts to appear regularly on both Get Up and First Take. He disagreed, pointing to colleagues such as Orlovsky and Schrager, whom he believed had been given those opportunities. By the time he finally appeared alongside Schrager the following day, he admitted he was already frustrated before their now-viral disagreement over CeeDee Lamb even began.

During that exchange, Clark’s “That’s the non-player in you” remark prompted Schrager to respond, “Don’t belittle me.” Clark said he wasn’t trying to dismiss Schrager’s opinion because he never played in the NFL, but rather explain that the two naturally viewed the game differently.

“I wasn’t trying to say, ‘You don’t have an opinion because you didn’t play,’ I was trying to say, ‘You have a different opinion because you didn’t play.’ And maybe I didn’t get that across in the right way. I can accept that.”

Clark said what happened after the cameras stopped rolling bothered him even more. He recalled producers telling him they feared he was “going to get aggressive,” something he said left him feeling unfairly stereotyped after more than a decade at the network.

“The person you’ve been knowing all this time, who never did anything, who’s never had an altercation here, is going to get aggressive?… So now you’re trying to paint this angry Black man trope of me that you know is not true.”

Even so, Clark maintained that he and Schrager privately addressed the incident and continued working together without lingering issues.

Ultimately, Clark argued that while the Schrager episode became an easy storyline after his dismissal, it wasn’t the reason ESPN decided to move on. “That was unfortunate, but that’s not why I got fired.”