NEW YORK — If the day comes when Dan Snyder—finally, once and for all, and by whatever method it happens—finds himself without an NFL franchise, Oct. 18 will be remembered as a milestone on the path there.
And Tuesday, the gloves came off.
While no other owner went where Colts owner Jim Irsay so willfully did, it was clear inside the posh lower Manhattan hotel where the NFL fall meeting was held which way the wind was blowing on the future of the Commanders. And that future increasingly seems like it won’t include the guy who bought the team 23 years ago.
Snyder’s not walking a metaphorical ownership Green Mile yet. But that’s clearly in sight.
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NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was forthright early Tuesday night when he said that outside of his own guidance to owners to allow for Mary Jo White to complete her investigation before commenting on Snyder, there wasn’t much discussion on Snyder behind closed doors. What he failed to mention was what was happening between sessions, and over text messages, and in the breakout rooms and hallways of the meeting space.
There, among themselves, owners were discussing what to do with Snyder and his Commanders. It started as soon as the owners filtered into the hotel. It escalated after Irsay said there are “potentially” 24 votes to remove Snyder as co-owner of the Commanders.
The temperature, very clearly, has been turned up. And now it’s come to the point where a standoff seems to be looming—with Snyder more or less daring the owners to vote him out, and on multiple occasions.
The first came last week when a Commanders spokesperson, in a written statement, called ESPN’s exposé on Snyder “part of a well-funded, two-year campaign to coerce the sale of the team, which will continue to be unsuccessful.” The second came Tuesday, after Irsay spoke out, when the same spokesperson in another statement, said, “We are confident that, when he has an opportunity to see the actual evidence in this case, Mr. Irsay will conclude that there is no reason for the Snyders to consider selling the franchise. And they won’t.”
If Snyder comes off like a cornered animal, well, there’s a reason for that. He has to know the score here. That another owner was willing to go on the offensive—and suggest setting the precedent of voting a peer out of the club and forcing the sale of a multibillion-dollar commodity—is mighty significant.
The tenor of the meeting changed when Irsay let 13 words cross his lips in reference to Snyder.
“I believe there is merit to removing him as owner of the [Commanders].”
The assembled reporters peppered him with follow-ups. Irsay doubled down, and doubled down, and doubled down. Next to him on the nearby set of stairs was Colts president Pete Ward, who had a slight smile and didn’t seem in the least surprised by his boss’s comments. A couple of NFL public relations staffers were in earshot, too.
And Irsay’s voice trembled with emotion at times as he continued to bury Snyder. Watching him, it was clear as day to me, having been around Irsay, that this was deeply meaningful to him. He’d put plenty of thought into it—something further backed up by the lack of surprise on the face of Ward and the others around him.
So I tracked down Irsay later in the afternoon and asked, in a quiet moment, why it was so important for him to do what he did. He mentioned having his 13-year-old granddaughter, Charlotte, at training camp this summer, and that she’d be the fourth generation of ownership in his family, and what the impact of the sexual harassment allegations against Snyder and the toxic work culture on his watch would have on her.
“Knowing Wellington [Mara] and Dan Rooney and Lamar [Hunt] and the owners through the years, I know what we’re about as owners,” he told me. “Even in the last day, I had a chance to talk to [former 49ers owner] Eddie DeBartolo [Jr.] and [former commissioner] Paul Tagliabue and just kinda reminisce about the context of decades that have passed and things that have happened. All those things give you certain direction and vision.
“I don’t like the fact that sometimes the way owners are viewed, people think we can do whatever we want, with all the sorts of issues that are out there. Because that’s not true,” Irsay continued. “This is not what we stand for, this sort of thing. I mean, it’s absolutely not. So the league’s very important to me. I’ve been taught by founders of the league and, like I said, Lamar [of the Chiefs] and Wellington [Giants] and Dan Rooney [Steelers] that you do what’s best for the Colts but what’s best for the league, too.
“You have to protect the shield to protect the league, and I don’t like to see the shield damaged. And right now, the shield is taking some damage from all this.”
There’s important context, too, that Irsay was the owner to say something—his own past is checkered, and he was once suspended after pleading guilty to driving under the influence of oxycodone and hydrocodone (he later said that the incident helped him confront his drug addiction). So in being the one to stand up against Snyder, he also put himself squarely in the line of fire, opening himself up to retaliation from Snyder.
His response to the idea of all that, and the chance that Snyder could come back at him, was implicitly, Bring it on. Clearly, this was too big to Irsay for him to keep his mouth shut. And for him, it relates back to the women in his life.
“No question,” he said. “Just having three daughters and seven granddaughters, I can relate to that sort of thing—my seven granddaughters, as they venture off in different forms of working for organizations. I know the culture that we have in Indianapolis. I know the special culture that we have and the family atmosphere that we have developed there. That’s important to me, and I believe it’s important to many owners in this league, because that’s what we’re about.”
Other owners have shown patience in waiting for the findings of the White report. Not Irsay.
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At the end of the day, Jaguars owner Shad Khan stood on a street corner outside the hotel, about to climb into a black Escalade to go home, and said it was important to him to be fair to everyone involved. So he said he’d wait for the White report to come out to offer comment.
“Once it comes out,” he said, climbing into the SUV, “everyone’s going to have an opinion.”
The issue, for now—as Irsay saw it, too—is that the league and the owners will continue to take the brunt of Snyder’s PR damage until then. Fair or not, people will ask, If they just stand by and stay quiet, are they all like him?
Irsay’s message emphatically combatted that perception, and, quietly, at least a couple of other owners applauded him for it. As for what’s next, really, that depends on how quickly White completes her investigation, the findings and then, finally, the stomach the other owners have to sanction a guy who’s very clearly made everyone else in the room look absolutely horrible.
Will they be willing to take on the glass-houses problem Irsay did, in risking that Snyder could start airing everyone’s dirty laundry, according to the ESPN report? Are they O.K. setting a precedent that could lead to pressure to have others sell their teams if they step out of line? Would they be O.K. taking on the legal liability of ousting one of their own, with Snyder’s litigious past a strong indicator that he’d break the lawyers out again in such a circumstance?
One longtime executive said Tuesday night that he doubted they would. He suggested that, if White finds to be true what most assume about Snyder, the NFL would have to have Cowboys owner Jerry Jones go to Snyder and essentially say, “It’s time, I’ll get you your $7 billion. You gotta leave.”
Jones, for his part, on the way out of the hotel, wasn’t tipping his hand much when he was asked, as a longtime defender of Snyder, whether he is still the right owner for the team.
“We’ve all agreed we wouldn’t comment,” Jones said. “We just wouldn’t offer any comment at all. But I know this, I’ve said it, I have no knowledge of anything. And I’m brought up in the article. I have no knowledge of anything that has got any basis to it. Period.”
What was left unsaid there was where Jones stands on Snyder, the man who created this mess for everyone in the first place.
And that said it all.
