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Former ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark has essentially accused the Worldwide Leader in Sports of firing him without cause.
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Clark was among those laid off by ESPN this week. Clark was informed of his ousting at ESPN while he was on the air during “NFL Live” on Monday. He did not return to the program, as news broke of his ousting.
The former LSU Tigers defensive back had been at ESPN for a decade. He was earning around $2 million per year. Clark was part of “NFL Live” and ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” coverage, among other programs.
But ESPN chose to let him go, along with several other prominent figures, including David Lloyd, Cam Newton, Bart Scott and others.
While Clark was technically laid off, the former NFL analyst believes that he was essentially fired without cause.
Clark went over his ousting at ESPN during the latest episode of his podcast The Pivot.
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Former NFL analyst makes accusations against ESPN
Clark believes that ESPN wanted him out.
“I wasn’t laid off. I was fired. They’re using layoffs as a cover and a camouflage for what they already intended on doing,” Clark said. “But there was no cause for it. 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.”
Clark traced his layoff to several different things, including his coverage of the Kyren Lacy tragedy.
“During the season, after some of the Kyren Lacy news broke, there were people on our network, including me, who said something about it. Both of those people apologized, as did I,” he explained.
“I didn’t want to. I was told I couldn’t come to work if I didn’t, and at that point, I said, ‘Well, I can’t come to work tomorrow, because I don’t believe that I did anything wrong.’ Some conversations happened, and we got to that point. And OutKick wrote an article about the people that apologized, 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, and spoke about me in such a nasty way.”
ESPN doesn’t publicly comment on layoffs, but Clark is certainly making his opinion known.
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This story was originally published July 26, 2026 at 5:19 AM.