During Daniel Snyder’s ruinous reign, there’s always another shoe ready to drop
There is a temptation, given everything surrounding Snyder’s $1.6 million payment to a former team employee following what others describe in court documents as “a serious accusation of sexual misconduct,” to read between the lines in The Washington Post’s story that uncovered the whopping dollar amount. The possibilities — will he have to sell the team? — are endless.
But it’s more instructive to concentrate on what we do know than what we might wonder. And what we know is a lot.
We know a sitting NFL owner paid a seven-figure settlement to a female employee. That’s stunning — and relevant not just as it reflects on Snyder, but potentially for the future of the franchise. Former Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson sold his team under pressure after it was revealed that he and the team reached settlements with women who accused him of sexual misconduct and with a team scout whom he referenced with a racial slur.
We know the team’s lawyers are fighting to keep the details of the settlement out of public sight, even if they’re at the forefront of public mind. We know that, when The Post first reported over the summer on the offensive atmosphere created for female employees under Snyder’s watch, the owner promised “a full, unbiased investigation,” and that the league chimed in that “The club has pledged that it will give its full cooperation to the investigator.” We know that the league then took control of the investigation from the team.
We know that new coach Ron Rivera seems to have the on-field product and the working, locker room environment improving almost by the week (noted exception: Dwayne Haskins), which is something like turning around the Titanic in a bathtub. We know that Jason Wright is receiving rave reviews for the tenor and tone he is setting as the team’s new president — a forthright forward-facing figure who further makes his predecessor, Bruce Allen, look like the shadowy political operative that he was.
Together, the additions of Rivera and Wright — along with the groundbreaking hiring of Julie Donaldson to oversee media content and be a member of the radio broadcast team — have generated more positive publicity and good vibes around the franchise than Snyder has been able to foster in more than two decades as the owner. There have been fleeting moments of optimism, for sure, the return of Joe Gibbs and Robert Griffin III’s rookie season among them.
But with Washington, no rush of warmth is sustainable, and each is ushered out in cataclysmic fashion. A fan base that thinks the nadir finally must have been reached too often finds the franchise holding a shovel, digging to new depths. Grab your hard hat and your spotlight if you have the stomach to see what’s down there.
That’s why this moment feels pivotal. For there to be public confidence in the idea that the franchise is in fact headed in a new, more positive direction — in on-field performance, in public messaging, in fan experience, in overall reputation — then there must be similar public confidence in the NFL’s investigation into the environment created under Snyder. Right now, that’s hard to muster. Further, when that investigation concludes, the NFL must understand that nothing other than a full and transparent accounting of what was uncovered will sway a Washington community that no longer merely distrusts the team’s owner but reviles him.
Finally, unless we — the fan base, current and former team employees, his fellow NFL owners, the world — wholeheartedly believe that Snyder is cooperating in a full, unbiased investigation, then the idea of fundamental, to-the-core change in Ashburn is dead on arrival. Right now, court documents — unsealed only because The Post pushed, redacted all the same — show Snyder’s team actively working to keep information out of the public eye.
This franchise is existing in three wholly separate worlds. There is the course Rivera is charting with the players and the football operations staff, one that could yield an NFC East title as soon as this weekend. There is the increasingly public legal battle between Snyder and his minority partners, three successful business executives who no longer want anything to do with him. And there’s the NFL’s investigation into Snyder’s workplace.
Snyder’s camp is clearly trying to outline a case that his business partners are bitter and trying to plant negative stories about him because if he has to sell, they might get more for their slices of the team. Regardless of their merits, such claims shouldn’t distract from the facts we now know about Snyder’s ability to oversee a company where employees feel valued and safe. Before Tuesday, those facts felt seedy, slimy, gross — fitting not of a leader of a proud franchise but of someone whose debasing of other people devalues his team’s standing. Throw in a $1.6 million settlement because of serious sexual misconduct allegations, and Snyder would appear to have skeletons in both his professional and personal closets.
What a franchise. When you root for sports teams, whether it’s by birth or by choice, you bring a desire for everyone involved — the players, the coaches, even the owner — to be upstanding, hard-working, trustworthy people. Maybe that’s unreasonable. It’s certainly unrealistic. But with Snyder in charge, fans of the Washington Football Team can never fully embrace the organization as a whole because the leadership is ruinous, and something always lurks around the corner.
