The Washington Commanders will have a new owner soon. Perhaps as soon as next week, when the NFL will hold a special meeting to vote on the sale of the Commanders from Daniel Snyder to a group led by Josh Harris for $6.05 billion.
According to a new report from Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham of ESPN, it was the leaked Jon Gruden emails that eventually led to the demise of Snyder as Washington’s owner.
While no one knows for sure who leaked Gruden’s offensive emails that eventually led him to resign as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, the leaks opened up more investigations into Snyder and the Commanders.
Earlier that year, Beth Wilkinson’s nearly yearlong investigation into the organization’s formerly toxic workplace culture had concluded. Snyder voluntarily stepped away from the team’s day-to-day business, inserting his wife Tanya into the co-CEO role, and the organization was fined $10 million.
As far as Snyder being removed as owner of the Commanders by fellow owners, that wasn’t on the table.
Then, the leaked emails occurred.
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times each published stories containing emails from Gruden to former Washington team president Bruce Allen when Gruden was an employee at ESPN.
ESPN speculated the leaks could have come from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell or NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, each of whom Gruden insulted in some of the emails. And then there was Snyder. In making Allen — who was fired at the conclusion of the 2019 season — look bad, the theory was Snyder had removed the organization’s biggest problem [Allen].
Lawyers close to the NFL and to Gruden said the choice to leak to the Times over The Washington Post, a newspaper Snyder hates, was a dead giveaway that Snyder and those around him were behind the leaks. Two sources told ESPN that the same “playbook” that was used in the A-Rod lawsuit against MLB was used to leak the emails published by the Times.
“The same crew that helped Alex [Rodriguez] go after [MLB commissioner Rob] Manfred helped Snyder with the leaks,” said another source who was briefed on how the Gruden leaks were engineered.
The original theory of Snyder leaking the emails came in the WSJ story when it was revealed Allen had called the league, upset about the leaking of his emails. Someone from the NFL office told Allen that Snyder’s team had leaked the emails. This is something Allen would later testify to before Congress during its investigation into Snyder and the team.
Regardless of who leaked the emails, it backfired. And that was the beginning of the end for Snyder’s 24-year reign as Washington’s owner.
While Snyder was not forced out as owner of the Commanders, Colts owner Jim Irsay spoke out against him multiple times in 2022, something unheard of in NFL circles. From that point forward, it was clear that Goodell and Snyder’s fellow owners wanted him gone.
Much more was included in the ESPN report.
