Dan Snyder needs to go, for real this time

Posted on by

February 15, 2022

by Steve Thomas

I’ve written a number of Dan Snyder-related columns over the years, including my Redskins 25 year report card from 2018 (click here to read), my New Redskins Perspective from 2019 (click here to read), The Collective Sins of Bruce Allen and Why He Should Be Fired – sins for which Snyder is ultimately responsible, from 2019 (click here to read), and my open letter to Dan Snyder, also from 2019 (click here to read).  I tried to be respectful in each of those columns, but the goal was always to put forth some ideas to help improve the franchise, from the top down.

This column is different.  Not the respectful part, because I always try to do that, but the goal of the column.

It’s time for the NFL to force Dan Snyder to sell this team.  It’s not news to remind everyone that over the past 25 years, he reduced a once proud, successful franchise – the Washington Redskins – that won Super Bowls and was a highly respected perennial contender with the longest streak of sold out home games in American sports to one of the least-successful franchises in the NFL in terms of on the field results, and a complete trainwreck off the field.  There’s no debate that Washington has been one of the worst-run franchises in the league, if not the worst.  All of that is awful and has caused many folks to abandon the team, a category in which I have sadly found myself recently.

Unbelievably, though, that’s not even the worst thing that he’s done nor why the NFL should send Snyder packing. The beginning of the end may have happened two weeks ago.  The entire world saw the first public, direct allegations of sexual misconduct against Snyder personally.  We were subjected to a congressional hearing last week in which multiple women and one man testified as to the allegedly toxic workplace culture inside the building in Ashburn.  The most damaging testimony came from one woman who claimed that Snyder had made unwanted advances towards her, including touching her knee under a table at a dinner and attempting to guide her into his limousine before Snyder’s attorney stepped in and put a stop to it.  Putting aside the fact that it’s virtually inexcusable that our useless Congress is inappropriately wasting valuable time holding a hearing about the innerworkings of one particular company that isn’t even publicly traded, it was devastating testimony for Snyder and for the franchise in general.  We don’t know whether the people testifying were being truthful or not, but nevertheless it could hardly have been more damaging for Snyder.

It is true that the testimony we saw last week was not proven, and instead are just allegations, but still: everything that has gone on with the workplace harassment allegations has thusfar only touched Snyder in tangential ways.  Now, that’s no longer true; now we have a direct allegation against him.  Up until two weeks ago, Snyder had plausible deniability that, even if everything is proven true, he was at fault.  That’s gone.  Where does that leave this team?  With an owner who’s done the following:

  • Destroyed the team on the field thru 25 years of meddling and poor roster and coaching decisions;
  • Reduced the fanbase from one of the biggest and most loyal fanbases in the league to the smallest and one of the most angry;
  • Taken the value of the franchise down from the second or third most valuable to the fifth-most valuable;
  • Created, fostered, and participated in an allegedly absolutely abhorrent workplace environment in which, among other things, women were subjected to harassment and unwanted sexual advances on a daily basis; and
  • Been accused of sexual misconduct.

That’s obviously just the beginning.  Everyone knows the whole story at this point; you don’t need me to make another list here.

It now seems apparent that what I and many other suspected was true from the start of this mess: the investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Washington by attorney Beth Wilkinson was a sham from the beginning, not in terms of the work done by Wilkinson, but in the intended result.  The sham is that the investigation was designed mainly to cover up Washington’s wrongdoing and make the allegations go away rather than uncover the truth for the world to see.  Neither Snyder, Roger Goodell, nor anyone else associated with the league ever wanted to actually discover what was really going on inside the team and fix the situation.  The investigation’s true goal from the start was just to bury the allegations and protect Snyder and – more importantly – the other owners.

And now: a new and underwhelming name, thereby effectively putting the team into expansion franchise territory, designed principally to distract what’s left of the fanbase from the ongoing trainwreck, in the process minimizing the wonderful history that folks of my generation loved.  The name change and claims by Jason Wright, Tanya Snyder, and others that the team is entering a “new era” is a nakedly transparent attempt to convince everyone to simply forget about all of the bad things Snyder has either done or for which he’s been responsible: Look over here, dear fans, we have a new shiny toy!  Don’t worry about the toxic sludge seeping out of the walls.  Please buy a bunch of new gear and some tickets, because it’s all different now.  Everything’s great, we promise!  Is anyone buying this?  Personally, I’m insulted that they think I’m stupid enough not to see right through the charade.

How much more do the other NFL owners need to hear?  Jerry Richardson was informally forced to sell the Carolina Panthers for not much more.  He was asked to leave when evidence surfaced that several former Panthers employees had received monetary settlements as a result of claims of inappropriate sexual comments and behavior in the workplace by Richardson, plus at least one allegation of Richardson’s use of an undisclosed racial term.  We’re almost to that point with Snyder with the exception of the racial allegation.  I’m not talking about the NFL instituting a formal process to remove Snyder, although that process does exist.  That’s never going to happen – if it were, the owners would’ve voted Al Davis out 30 years ago.  I mean to suggest that the other NFL owners need to come to Snyder and tell him that the gig is up.  Daniel Snyder is been the ultimate embarrassment to the NFL and he’s contributed absolutely nothing to the league’s greater good.  If ruining a respected franchise isn’t enough, he’s now in the public record not only as a terrible manager and leader, but with accusations of him being a personal miscreant as well.

I don’t know whether Beth Wilkinson actually created a written report about the results of her investigation or not, and I also don’t know how much of the congressional testimony last week was true, but the NFL needs to cut bait now before more comes out.  How much more do the league owners need to hear?  What does Snyder do for the league that is so valuable that they need to keep him around?  Has any other existing team owner done more to damage both his own team and the NFL at large than Snyder?  Even his fellow bottom-feeding franchise owners don’t have the level of awful surrounding them as does Snyder.  He’s nothing but an anchor on the NFL’s growth.

Signs exist that the NFL is getting tired of Snyder’s garbage ownership tenure, as evidenced by the NFL’s reaction to the team’s announcement that it would investigate the allegations raised at the congressional hearing.  The league didn’t issue some sort of mealy-mouthed statement of cooperation; instead, it directly contradicted the team in writing and said that the team would not be allowed to investigate itself.  Then, the NFL released part of a letter to the congressional committee that said the team had refused to allow the league to have access to a cloud-based database of documents from the Wilkinson investigation.  I can’t remember another time in which the NFL publicly disagreed with a team owner even once, let alone twice in the span of a few days.  The beginning of the end might just have arrived.

I truly don’t understand what the league is waiting for here.  It gives me no pleasure to be this negative about my team – I suppose now my former team – or the owner, but there’s nowhere left to go for Snyder.  It’s time for the owners who run the league to tell Snyder that the gig is up.  He needs to sell the team and exit stage left, never to be heard from again.

Make it happen, owners.  The fans are waiting.