David Samson, the former president of the Miami Marlins turned sports front office analyst, says Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay’s comments about Daniel Snyder at the NFL owners meeting were part of a planned effort to remove the Washington Commanders owner.
“That was a planned owner-on-owner crime,” Samson said during his weekly Thursday appearance on “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz.”
“What’s going on right now is an absolute organized effort,” he said. “Everybody is lawyering up – on the owners’ side and on the Daniel Snyder side. And what you’re seeing is a steady stream – of not just leaks – but of positioning for litigation that may come if they can’t get Snyder to ‘Sarver.’ Snyder to ‘Sarver’ means that just he agrees to sell and he can be disappeared and we all move on and he collects every part of the value of the Commanders.”
Samson was referencing Phoneix Suns owner Robert Sarver, who has announced his attention to seek a sale of the NBA team after an investigation into the owner’s improper behavior and a toxic workplace culture at the team’s facility. Sarver ultimately decided to announce a sale after many around the league were upset that NBA commissioner Adam Silver was only able to levy a fine and one-year suspension of Sarver.
And for Samson, this isn’t exactly Marshall McLuhan’s medium as the message, but really the messenger in Irsay who lets everyone know a bit more about what exact message was trying to be sent.
“The litigation comes, if a vote actually gets taken and Irsay is correct and he didn’t just come out, he’s the perfect spokesperson, he’s the one who you could say, ‘My god, is he doing lines before he’s saying that? Does [NFL commissioner Roger] Goodell even know? Is Goodell despondent that Irsay is talking?’” Samson said. “No, he’s perfect. Snyder’s threatening to blow out the secrets of all the owners and Irsay says, ‘Hey, everybody knows my secrets, baby. Let’s count the votes.”
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So to Samson, Irsay, who has had several public missteps in his personal life that have been subject to discipline by the NFL, was chosen by Goodell and the other owners to be the perfect spokesperson for this message after last week’s reporting from ESPN indicated Snyder had been collecting dirt to potentially “blow up” others around the league.
“There’s a whole meeting that takes place at owners meetings about who’s going to talk to the media," the former baseball executive said. “Whether it is going to be a scrum or whether it’s going to be a leak, whether it is going to be walking through the lobby, it’s totally strategic.”
“I finally think we can say, Snyder will not survive this,” Samson said.
Samson also was asked about the letter Snyder sent to his fellow NFL owners, and then sent to the media, refuting the reports from ESPN and some ESPN did not make.
“It was a 9.8 out of 10 in the unbelievably stupid category, so disingenuous,” he said. “This is Dan Snyder, they’ve known him for decades, this is not someone who’s trying to become an owner, who’s trying to say, ‘Hey what you may have read about me is not true.’”
Samson calls the letter “a patently horrific attempt [by] Snyder, it’s like pathetic almost. It’s like someone trying to hold on knowing that they can’t win.”
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