Ryan Clark is not shy about his exit from ESPN anymore. The former NFL safety found out he was getting fired during a live broadcast on NFL Live. Then, he took to his podcast, The Pivot, and pushed back against the network’s version, saying it was a cover for what he believes was a targeted firing. Now the question is whether his comments could have legal consequences.

“Note on Ryan Clark: ESPN owes him a lot of money still. However, by dissing the company and posting IGs naming Burke Magnus, Disney will almost certainly have a legal claim to claw back that money in the form of disparagement. It’s why fired people never comment until their deal expires,” Bobby Burack posted on X.

Clark has referred to his dismissal subtly on his Instagram posts in the following captions:

“Proof of life…” he wrote on a workout video. “Before the madness of yesterday, I woke up, got in my Tundra, drove to Planet Fitness, and got to work.”

“Back in AZ getting the work in…” he wrote in another. “Last time I was here, I still had my day job. That day was full of the things I loved most. I trained my son and a group of DBs, got my own work in – Dilly Dallies and all – and made a Target run for a creator light so I’d have a setup for NFL Live with my favorite people.”

“Ain’t go no job, but I stay shive!” he wrote on his most recent post.

Clark is clear that it was a firing, not a layoff. And he’s making a much bigger accusation, claiming ESPN deliberately tipped off Fox News-owned OutKick about his departure to control the narrative and come out looking good in the process.

To understand why Clark thinks that, you have to go back to last fall. That’s when he apologized for sharing inaccurate details about the car accident involving LSU’s Kyren Lacy, who later died by suicide. OutKick covered that apology extensively, and Clark noticed something that stuck with him.

“Outkick wrote an article about all the people that apologized,” Clark said. “Two very prominent faces at ESPN, and they praised them for who they were and how they brought this thing back around, and they bashed me. Talked about how negative I was, spoke about me in such a nasty way.”

“So how poignant and purposeful is it to make sure that’s the same publication that gets the story that I’m going to be fired?”

In 2015, Clark joined ESPN, then re-signed in 2021. Contract talks heated up in 2024, with Clark saying he deserved more money before things were worked out. Reportedly, he was making roughly $2 million per year. It’s not clear if his deal just ran out or if he was let go early. But his account of what happened could change the way people see this whole thing.

According to an internal memo circulated among ESPN employees by company president Jimmy Pitaro, the network had to have “difficult discussions” in the wake of the NFL Network acquisition.

Will Ryan Clark drag ESPN through the mud even more? We will have to wait and watch.