So, Dan Snyder could have gotten away with it all? The embattled owner of the Washington Commanders, who had been investigated and punished after the Beth Wilkinson report about a toxic workplace culture that led to the ouster of several team executives, could have simply waited to return from his rather lenient and nebulous league punishment handed out in the summer of 2021 and simply continued to own the franchise?
According to new reporting from ESPN's Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham, that appears to have been the case, until emails that contained racist and anti-gay language from Jon Gruden were leaked to the media and kicked off a chain of events that led to Gruden's resignation as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, the head of the NFLPA retaining his job, a second NFL-led investigation of Snyder, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell appearing before Congress, and Snyder handing over control of the team he bought in 1999 to the Josh Harris-led group in eight days time.
Van Natta joined Kevin Sheehan to recount his extensive reporting about this "triggering event" of Gruden's emails – which were to then Washington team president Bruce Allen (who was once one of Snyder's closest confidants but then became a sworn enemy – were leaked first to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
"When the first leak happened in early October of 2021 in the Wall Street Journal, Snyder was all but clear of everything," Van Natta told Sheehan. "He had very light punishment when you look at it in hindsight... but as we report Snyder all but dictated the terms of his punishment to the NFL even going so far as making word suggestions in the press release announcing his punishment and yet he was still getting antsy in the fall because Goodell was not allowing him on the field before games, Goodell was not allowing him to return to league meetings.
"So, our sources told us that Snyder decided that he would try to ingratiate himself with Roger Goodell by basically putting these emails front and center to the league office and to have people around him find a way to leak them, giving Goodell an opportunity to knock out Gruden. And Snyder knew that Goodell and Gruden had a very complicated relationship and Snyder thought this would basically buy him some points with Goodell in doing this."
All of that backfired, as Van Natta told Sheehan, the Congressional inquiries into Snyder began because of the leaked emails and led to a second investigation by Mary Jo White and legal investigations in several states.
"It was a major miscalculation on the part of Snyder," Van Natta told Team 980. "Without the leaks, he might just have survived. This was something that Snyder ended up doing to himself."
Of course, the ESPN story doesn't definitively pinpoint Snyder as the one who leaked the emails as it points out that in addition to the Washington owner, lawyers for Snyder, Goodell, NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith, and even Desiree Perez, the CEO of Roc Nation, could have leaked the emails. And – why not – it could have even been all of them who leaked it.
The conversation began with Sheehan recounting Van Natta's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism with the Miami Herald during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the details of the harrowing (and life-endangering) experience are worthy of your time. Listen to the full segment on the audio player above for the full story on all of this and the story of what became known in league circles as the "Blackmail PowerPoint" and more!
Follow @BenKrimmel for more.
Keep up with The Team 980 via:
Audacy App | Online Stream | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
Related
