The best NFL franchises have direction.
The best NFL franchises harbor a clear and logical organizational structure from top to bottom. This organizational structure, which often consists of an owner, a president, a general manager, and a coaching staff, is designed to help subjugate duties, and ensure that all members have not only a job, but the right job.
Based on this definition, the Washington Redskins are not one of the NFL’s best franchises. Far from it, in fact. While other teams boast a team environment, and a growing network of informed decision makers, the Redskins are stuck with one man at the top, everyone else at the bottom, and as a result, they’ve taken on an embarrassing state for years on end.
Redskins president Bruce Allen has drawn much of the ire for the team’s embarrassing state over the past decade; the hashtag “#FireBruceAllen” has been circulating on Twitter for weeks now, ever since the firing of Brian Lafemina.
The sentiment is well-educated; Allen has long been a detriment to the Redskins franchise. But recent events have proven that he is insignificant; a mere module of intervention. A puppet, to be used by the man at the very top: Dan Snyder.
Dan Snyder is the man behind the curtain, while Allen is Oz. But such a fantastical analogy doesn’t begin to capture the disdain for rational thought and empathy with which Snyder has run his favorite childhood franchise into the ground, with the intention of becoming the hero Redskins fans have long awaited. Here are the reasons why Dan Snyder is the real problem. And why a change in leadership starts and ends… with the end of his quest.
NOTE:
This is a reposting of an article from over a year ago, detailing the underlying reasons for Dan Snyder’s culture problem. Some aspects of this post, particularly pertaining to Bruce Allen’s employment status, are outdated.
The report yesterday may have been surprising to some, but Dan Snyder’s personality traits made it possible.
A misplaced superiority complex
The darker sides of Snyder’s purchase of the Redskins were evident fairly soon after the transaction occurred. A particular incident, shared to us by Ken Johannesen on our latest podcast, spotlights Snyder’s terribly misplaced superiority complex.
In 1999, his first season with the Redskins after purchasing the team in May of that year, Snyder’s defensive coordinator was Mike Nolan. Nolan, in hindsight, hasn’t been a fairly consistent defensive mind in the NFL. As a defensive coordinator for seven teams, he never spent more than four years at a franchise, and in 1999, he was entering his third season with Washington.
Nolan coordinated a bad game early in the season, and was met with immediate complaints from Snyder, who didn’t like his “vanilla” defense. Some time after the game, in the next week, a gallon of ice cream appeared on Nolan’s desk, with a note saying: “This is what I like: Not vanilla.”
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Nolan, per Larry Brown Sports, had already deduced that Snyder was an owner who couldn’t be reasoned with over football matters, so he brushed off the first incident and prepared for his next game. Again, his calls left something to be desired for the oft-irrational owner. After another loss, and another spotty game by Nolan, when Nolan came to his office at night later that very day, he found waiting for him a melting trio of ice cream canisters, and another note: “I wasn’t joking. I do not like vanilla.”
It’s one thing to suggest a different defensive philosophy behind closed doors, in good faith. After all, owners care about the success of their team. It’s another to disguise personal preference as the one correct way to do things, and ruthlessly make an example of an employee, showing a dense lack of empathy, a lack of self-awareness, and alarming pretentiousness in the process. It’s another thing for a new, unqualified owner to trespass this far down the organizational hierarchy, to slap his authoritative hand onto the field, as if he knows better because he bought his title.
But Snyder does not know better. He only thinks he does. He has a superiority complex that serves as his opaque cocoon, coaxing him into believing that he is the hero to save the Redskins franchise. Snyder is not unlike Syndrome, the arch-villain from the critically-acclaimed animated movie “The Incredibles”.
A particular scene stands out for this analogy, when Mr. Incredible finds himself in the clutches of the caped conman. While the protagonist sits in shackles, Syndrome monologues, and reveals his plan to the hero. In a rage, Incredible shouts: “So… you killed off real heroes, so you could pretend to be one?”
Snyder’s game that he plays, childish like an animated movie, pegs him as the pretend hero. And in his path, others have stood, and been promptly removed. Norv Turner, Joe Gibbs, Vinny Cerrato, Mike Shanahan, Scot McCloughan, and most recently, Brian Lafemina. Snyder shuffles through potential saviors on a yearly basis, to try and stand on their shoulders in order to pave a path to prominence. And when they either reveal themselves as similarly incompetent, or go against his infinite knowledge, he disposes of them, and paints them as the real problem. In fact, he may genuinely think others are the problem, lacking the foresight, or willingness, to take a simple look into the mirror.
Perhaps he’s accepted this form. And perhaps he’ll continue to kill off real heroes, and maintain a blind pretense that he is the answer. Whatever it takes, to keep the empty charade alive. To keep his dream from devolving into dust.
A manipulatory hierarchical structure
Snyder has always preferred a heavy hand in the Redskins affairs, across all departments. But an NFL owner can not manipulate the many cogs of a franchise by himself. This fact gives the normal owner an inclination to put together a trustworthy staff, one that he can rely on to make decisions he might not have as much insight into. It might convince a normal owner to create a team with open-minded thinkers, tireless workers, and people who can elevate those around them in a healthy working environment.
Dan Snyder is not a normal NFL owner. With a severely misplaced superiority complex, his desire is not to supplement his team with sensible decision makers who might assault his ego, but to instead magnify his own influence by using a stooge to do his work without leaving his fingerprints. That stooge is team president Bruce Allen.
Since being hired as the team president after Vinny Cerrato’s ousting, Allen has amassed a record of 59-87-1. Taking out division winning seasons in 2012 and 2015, which both proved to be flukes, Allen is 40-74-1. Over that span, the losses have been compounded by countless embarrassing public relations episodes, and football moves that lack consistency, and show no real evidence for any direction.
Allen’s resume suggests that he should have been fired a long time ago, as part of Snyder’s hero games. But even with thousands of fans calling for his ouster directly to the Redskins Twitter account with the hashtag #FireBruceAllen, and with thousands more actively protesting by refusing to attend home games anymore, Allen still stays. In fact, he thrives.
Despite his record, which would be improved by annual 7-9 performances, a glowing quote from Snyder rests on Bruce Allen’s team bio page, on Redskins.com: “Bruce Allen is the personification of an NFL winner. Our fans know his heritage; we know his abilities. He is the right person to lead our club.”
This quote reeks of denial, in its purest and most destructive state. What kind of make-believe world does Snyder live in, you ask? In what kind of world can Snyder say that Bruce Allen is a winner? In what kind of world can Dan Snyder, of all people, speak for the fans who so forcefully oppose his words directly, on a platform for all to see? The fans who are ignored, neglected, and monetarily leeched by Snyder every year?
In a world where Snyder is the hero.
Bruce Allen is not the personification of an NFL winner. He is the personification of Dan Snyder’s will. With Allen’s hand, Snyder plays a crucial role in the Redskins’ decision-making. This was made particularly clear when Brian Lafemina was fired, as he threatened Snyder’s manipulatory power structure. And it was made clear when Snyder recently promoted Bruce Allen to oversee both business and football operations, against the cries of fans who have watched their franchise rot from the inside out for twenty years. Snyder can’t fire Allen. Allen is too valuable to Snyder’s artificial structure.
With Allen by his side, Dan Snyder is the hero. He surreptitiously works through another human being to achieve his personal goals, manipulates subordinates to keep his perfect system in tact, and fires genuine people to label them as scapegoats for his failure, and by extension, keep his hero archetype alive.
Dan Snyder must be the hero. At the cost of all the noble traits heroes are meant to possess.
A thirst for opposition
Snyder sees the backlash. He knows, more or less, of his reputation, both inside the Redskins fan base, and amongst the league’s other executives. Why does he show no remorse?
Because Snyder thirsts for opposition. It adds to the hero archetype he desperately seeks. The “Me against the world” mentality. A lengthy excerpt from Mike Freeman’s book titled Two Minute Warning: How Concussions, Crime and Controversy Could Kill the NFL (and What the League Can Do to Survive), presented by Chris Lingenbach of CBS D.C., characterizes the nature of Snyder’s thought process, and just how far it goes.
The quote details a tense standoff at the 2012 NFL owners’ meetings, where the Redskins were given an opportunity to address cap penalties incurred in the previous year. Bruce Allen was present, and he again fulfilled his sole purpose as Snyder’s hammer, to the owner’s hysteric delight.
"According to a longtime NFL team executive who was present, it wasn’t long into his speech before [Bruce] Allen threatened to sue every owner in the NFL. He would go on to get more fiery, personal and ugly from there, as he began pacing furiously around the hotel ballroom. There were more threats of a lawsuit. Allen grew angrier. He began screaming. He wasn’t done. He then pointed at each member of the management council, saying Washington and Dallas should have never been penalized because the council had approved the very contracts that would cause the teams to be punished. He saved some of his harshest remarks for John Mara, co-owner of the Giants and one of the most respected men in all of sports, a key cog who has been with the team for decades. Mara was furious. Everyone in the room was stunned. Owners and executives, sitting just several feet from one another, began texting each other, incredulous at what they were witnessing. In some of the texts, Allen was facetiously called Clarence Darrow, the legendary litigator known for his bombastic courtroom speeches. Owners and executives say they had never seen anything like it. Nobody had ever gotten so personal or made such threats."
According to Freeman’s book, via Lingenbach’s article, while Allen filibustered on the open floor, Snyder “gleefully swiveled back and forth in a chair that practically enveloped him, at times smiling widely.”
While Snyder swivels like a child watching a colorful action flick, his fanbase crumbles. Yellow seats lie empty, and per Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, NFL owners place the blame on Snyder and his puppet, Allen, who is seen as “literally, a joke” in NFL circles.
None of this bothers Snyder. To him, it’s all part of the plan. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. Heroes always have their adversaries. Heroes are always portrayed as the underdog; with the odds stacked against them. It is the struggle that makes the fabled tale.
But the odds weren’t always against Snyder. He took charge of a storied franchise in 1999, a franchise that had won a Super Bowl less than ten years prior. And over the course of twenty years, he’s earned his unsavory reputation with his business practices, his interactions, both with his NFL peers and with the Redskins fans who’ve lost their faith, and his reckless methods on the quest to becoming a hero.
But for Snyder, the ends justify the means.
The villain always believes this.
Inside the quest
So where is our hero now?
He sits behind walls, presiding over operations at Redskins Park. He maintains unreasonable concessions prices, and he does nothing to make the fan experience less miserable. Opposing fans now flood the stadium as Redskins fans lose their motivation to care. But to Snyder, the numbers still check out. It’s all the same.
Perhaps Snyder does care, in a flawed sense. No one who has not met him, and spent time with him, can make a damning judgement of his character. Care must be taken that Snyder, in all his failings and all his indifference, is not dehumanized. Heroes are complex characters, after all. Villains are, too. Perhaps Snyder has actively sought out a solution all these years, as he watches his base, his franchise’s source of tradition and pageantry, trickle away faster and faster.
But if Dan Snyder isn’t the hero, the solution doesn’t work. And it’s someone else’s fault.
It is the function of Dan Snyder’s hollow cocoon; to tune out all the noise while he only makes more. To cast away the accused evildoer when everyone knows who the real villain is. To protect him, until maybe one day, he stumbles upon success by the luck of a lottery ticket.
In Snyder’s cocoon, he is a leader. On the outside, he holds no such qualities. In Snyder’s cocoon, he engineers success. On the outside, he repels it. In Snyder’s cocoon, he is a hero in waiting. On the outside, he is the villain who has since revealed himself inadvertently, leaving a steady trail of evidence.
What happens, in a story, when the villain holds all the power? When bleakness is bleakest, and when a hero eludes? All stories are different. For now, there’s only one thing the reader can do.
Turn the page. And keep reading with one eye shut.