Dan Snyder may be selling the Washington Commanders. He may be auctioning off minority shares of the team. He may simply be trolling an NFL universe that’s spent the last two decades slowly, then quickly, turning its back on him.
Forbes reported Wednesday that Snyder had hired Bank of America Securities to handle a possible sale. Minutes later, the franchise issued its own statement confirming the news, but only tipped that the banking conglomerate would handle “potential transactions.”
What that means, exactly, is unclear. But the fact the franchise, currently under Congressional scrutiny into its allegedly toxic culture, ended that statement by referring to its “gold standard of NFL workplaces” makes the whole thing feel exactly as delusional as the rest of Snyder’s reign of terror.
From the #Commanders: pic.twitter.com/wdjQSV5bTy
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) November 2, 2022
This makes the whole exercise difficult to understand. Any decision to sell would be a common sense move from a reviled owner who has lost the support of just about anyone who matters outside his own organization. It would also be a stunning reversal from the dug-in stance Snyder was espousing barely two weeks ago:
In response to Jim Irsay’s comments on Dan Snyder…this is from a Commanders spokesperson. pic.twitter.com/5IghFBeaCx
— Scott Abraham (@Scott7news) October 18, 2022
That denial came after ESPN’s most recent bombshell report into the dysfunction that has saturated every cell of the franchise’s being under Snyder and after Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay suggested there was “merit” to removing Snyder as the team’s owner. It wasn’t new or surprising, even given the gravity of ESPN’s 8,100-word expose. For years, Snyder has operated a shell game of blame assignment that allowed him to continue being generally horrible at everything with no lasting consequences.
When his high priced, poorly thought out acquisitions failed to pan out, he could fire his team executives. When he got caught chiseling his own season ticket holders out of deposits and allegedly scamming the NFL’s revenue sharing system, he could toss the vice president of sales under the bus.
When he hired Jason Wright as team president to build an “inclusive, winning culture” he allowed the former COO who oversaw the previous disastrous era to not only continue representing the team but to also tell people Wright was merely a figurehead. When his workplace became so toxic the highest levels of U.S. government felt it necessary to intervene, he handled his official role over to his wife, let her handle things at owners’ meetings and reportedly ran things from the shadows instead.
If Snyder is really selling the team it suggests two possibilities have taken place:
a) Snyder has suddenly become self aware, or
b) he’s run out of people willing or capable of falling on his sword.
That “gold standard” comment in the official release suggests it’s not the former. But the latter could, finally, be in play.
Snyder’s reign in Washington has been defined by failure at every level but a large network of escape routes designed to keep the current regime in charge. Recently, more and more people have gone beyond merely noticing that failure and taken steps to broadcast it to a world that may have been content to ignore the once-great, now-forgettable team in the nation’s capital.
Knowing the Commanders are a rapidly mutating virus that infects everything they touch is no longer just a football issue. Everyone from the team’s own employees to the league’s other owners to elected officials at multiple levels understands it.
Patient zero is Snyder, who’d long denied he was even sick and allegedly hoped his war chest of blackmail material — per ESPN, several sources around the league believe he’s responsible for leaking the emails whose insensitive language led to Jon Gruden’s resignation as Las Vegas Raiders head coach — would keep him healthy. He may still feel that way. Or he may finally realize the only way to stop the infection is to sell his team, collect his billions of dollars and life out his life on the megayacht where he spent last summer avoiding Congressional subpoenas.
There would be nothing fair about a Commanders sale. Snyder would still ultimately be rewarded for overseeing a franchise that failed to win games on the field and failed to protect its employees off it. But it would give Washington a chance to meaningfully reset from the top down without the specter of the thin-skinned, oft-criticized ghoul tainting everything the team does.
We don’t know if that’s going to happen. If it is, it’s great news for the Commanders. If it’s merely a gesture for Snyder to show the league he’s exploring his options but super duper serious about changing things for real this time so things will be OK if he keeps the club, well, this franchise is going to continue to fester and rot and infect others until something actually, truly changes.
