5 things Dan Snyder got critically wrong as Commanders owner

Dan Snyder hid when Commanders pressure mounted

The three men who acted as primary owners of the Washington Commanders – regardless of the nickname – prior to Dan Snyder shared one trait. George Preston Marshall, Edward Bennett Williams, and Jack Kent Cooke were all showmen who relished the spotlight. They had no qualms about standing in front of the public and making whatever case needed to be made.

Snyder is not like that. I remember early on in his ownership, being told by a friend who ran in the same social circles that he was almost painfully shy in public settings.

His wife Tanya was his shield. She would make small talk. She would rescue him from awkward encounters. Those were second-hand anecdotes and I cannot say for a fact that this was the case. But everything about Snyder’s ownership suggests there was in fact a lot of truth to those observations.

When things got bad, and they often got very bad, Snyder was nowhere to be seen. There would be a boilerplate statement from some organizational flunky – whether it was explaining that above-mentioned parking fiasco, the firing of beloved play-by-play man Frank Herzog, or the Sean Taylor statue debacle.

For better or worse, when the going got tough, Snyder was perceived as hiding from the public.

Had the team been winning, that kind of thing wouldn’t have mattered. In fact, it would have been seen as a positive. Snyder would have been an owner who didn’t grab the microphone to claim credit in good times. He would have been seen as modest and noble.

But the team didn’t win. And as the losses – both on and off the field – mounted, Snyder was seen as a coward. He would not stand in front of the long-suffering fans and take the brickbats. He would not explain his thinking, his strategy, or his long-term ideas for restoring the franchise to glory.

Owners can get away with a lot if they come across as stand-up guys. Love them or hate them, owners like Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban get respect from their fans and rivals alike for not being afraid to show their faces when things go badly. Snyder was never able to do that, and it snowballed as things got worse and worse for the Commanders throughout his tenure.