Daniel Snyder has been the owner of the professional football team in the nation’s capital since 1999. Throughout that time, but especially, Snyder and his close cohorts have engaged in behavior ranking from silly to outright repugnant, leaving a lot of people to wonder: Why is Snyder still allowed to own the Redskins/Football Team/Commanders, when he’s been more of a black eye to the NFL than any other owner in the modern era?
Per a blockbuster report by ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., Seth Wickersham and Tisha Thompson, the primary reason Snyder is still allowed in the NFL’s most exclusive club is the amount of “dirt” he has on other owners. The ESPN report, written after interviews with more than 30 sources, indicates that “the fear of reprisal that Snyder has instilled in his franchise, poisoning it on the field and off, has expanded to some of his fellow owners. Multiple owners and league and team sources say they’ve been told that Snyder instructed his law firms to hire private investigators to look into other owners — and Goodell.”
The sources asked for anonymity due to fear of reprisal on multiple fronts.
Most sources declined to go on the record for this story; Goodell has warned owners that they could be fined millions of dollars for leaking to reporters. Snyder “thinks he has enough on all of them,” says a former longtime senior Commanders executive. “He thinks he’s got stuff on Roger.” Another former Commanders executive routinely called Snyder “the most powerful owner in the NFL” because of what he knows, a source says.
Several owners say that they see the threats about damaging dossiers as a desperate tactic intended to scare owners from voting to remove Snyder. “He’s backed into a corner,” says a veteran owner who says he’s aware Snyder has gathered dirt on some owners. “He’s behaving like a mad dog cornered.”
It would take a vote of at least 24 other owners to boot Snyder out of his position, and to that end, Snyder has been lobbying his colleagues. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell appears to be playing both ends against the middle. Such a vote can not come without Goodell pushing for one, but Goodell has said that such things are ownership decisions.
From the report:
Indeed, it galls some owners and league and team executives that the NFL has been in lockstep with Washington on many fronts, “propping up” the franchise, in the words of one owner, by burying attorney Beth Wilkinson’s report about the team’s toxic workplace last year, and by helping the Commanders avoid penalties for repeated violations of the Rooney Rule. It’s clear, one owner says, that Goodell “doesn’t want to touch this.”
“This is what happens when you get into business with bad people,” the owner says about Snyder. “They know he’ll burn their houses down.”
The most repugnant aspect of Snyder’s tenure as owner is the wide-ranging culture of intimidation and sexual harassment that that has gone on for years, and caught the interest of the House Committee for Oversight and Reform. Goodell has steadfastly refused to release the findings from investigative reports due to a “common interest agreement” between Snyder and the NFL.
So, with the heat increasing for Snyder, the threats of kompromat.
In recent months, Snyder has told close confidants that his private investigators dug up incriminating information about Goodell, other unnamed league office executives and an unknown number of owners. League and ownership sources say there’s lots of gossip and speculation about what investigators could have unearthed, but some wonder whether Snyder actually has anything at all and is bluffing as a scare tactic.
More than the fear of leaked information — like the leaked information that essentially ended Jon Gruden’s career — could be the fact that the Commanders aren’t making enough money to allow the other owners to overlook Snyder’s actions anymore.
“His gate is the lowest in the league, his revenues are significantly low and trending lower,” a veteran owner says. “He is costing his fellow owners significant money.” Under Snyder’s watch, FedEx Field has reduced capacity from more than 90,000 seats to around 64,000 this year. Although the team spokesperson said the team’s business prospects have turned around, including a doubling of season-ticket holders and a 30% increase in sponsorships, owners said they haven’t seen evidence of improvement.
Multiple ownership and team sources complain that ticket sales for about half those remaining seats are controlled by ticket brokers, the highest ratio in the NFL. “He’s a partner — and he’s not pulling his end of the partnership,” a senior executive of a rival team says.
One owner said in the ESPN report that if Snyder could get a new stadium built, this might all go away, but even that is under serious danger. Defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio’s comments about the January 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol Building as a mere “dust-up” — comments for which Del Rio had to apologize and was fined — had local lawmakers insisting that such a stadium wasn’t going to happen until the kind of culture re-boot promised by the team and the league actually took place.
“I think at this point, I don’t think there ever will be a vote,” Virginia Senator Jeremy McPike said in June, of the 200 acres of land the team purchased for $100 million, seen to be the first steps in such a stadium. “I think they’re gonna be counting heads on the numbers, the number of people voting yes or no, and my guess is the vote’s probably off the table.
“I think this is the nail in the coffin. I think you’re gonna see more legislators now that have already been cooling off to it just shake their heads and walk away. I think that’s where we’re at now.”
It would be entirely on brand for the NFL to ignore all kinds of behavior issues — up to and including one of its owners gathering dirt on all of its other owners — and then making a move because an owner isn’t bringing home the bacon.
But that, according to this report, seems to be where things stand.
