What things did Dan Snyder get critically wrong during his tumultuous ownership of the Washington Commanders spanning more than two decades?
Here’s a little “inside Riggo’s Rag” for you.
For any article written, we shoot for a minimum of 600 words. As I sat down to begin a piece on Dan Snyder and his failures as Washington Commanders owner, it occurred to me that I could hit that minimum fairly easily by simply listing a couple of hundred names.
There would barely need to be a word of explanation or analysis. Even casual fans would know what I meant by ‘Sean Taylor Tribute, Part 1‘. ‘Pat Hill’ might require a little more information, but you’d remember it once I started.
I won’t be doing that today. Maybe tomorrow. The fountain of Snyder’s failures is seemingly bottomless. Today, I want to focus more on several specific examples of broad management failure.
In hindsight, it appears that Snyder was a bad fit as a professional sports team owner on an almost molecular level. Every instinct, every personality quirk was preternaturally destined for disaster.
These aren’t necessarily specific mistakes – personnel or staffing missteps, public relations fiascos. There are plenty of those. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone (maybe even me) writes about those things in the near future. These are more global failings.
With that in mind, here are five things Snyder got critically wrong throughout his ownership spell as the franchise prepares to embark on an exciting new era.
Commanders put money above all else under Dan Snyder
Dan Snyder was dealt one bad card when he took over one of the most valuable franchises in sports. FedEx Field (then called Jack Kent Cooke Stadium) was an albatross.
Fans of Mr. Cooke are happy he didn’t survive to see how badly it turned out – a cold, impersonal eyesore with poor accessibility. And a very long lease.
But Snyder made multiple PR mistakes in trying to maximize the revenue that the stadium could generate. He didn’t allow any outside food to be brought in and then jacked up the prices on all concessions.
He bombarded everyone who entered the stadium with product after product after product, constantly selling whatever could be sold. Snyder continued adding seats, which resulted in some longtime fans being shifted without their knowledge or consent.
In a vacuum, none of these things may have been all that bad – or all that different from what was happening at other stadiums. But they came as an avalanche and left a very bad taste.
Early on, that taste grew sour in the parking lot of the old Landover Mall.
One of FedEx’s many problems was limited parking. A lot of fans found a convenient solution, parking up Brightseat Road in the Landover Mall parking lot. They could park for free, then make a short walk down what is now called Sean Taylor Road into the stadium.
The Landover Mall tenants didn’t mind. There was ample parking for the underused mall, and an influx of a couple of thousand fans on Sunday might lead to more business before or after games.
But Snyder saw this as a cash cow opportunity. Suddenly, in the middle of the season – with neither warning nor public discussion – Prince George’s County law enforcement declared it illegal to walk on a public road into the stadium. They said it was a matter of “public safety“.
Conveniently, Snyder and the team had acquired parking facilities at the old Capital Centre. Since it wasn’t within walking distance, the team provided a “free” shuttle service. The fee for parking there was $25.
When fans realized that they could no longer park for free and walk into the stadium, but instead had to fork over $25 and ride a crowded shuttle, there was an outcry. I myself wrote a letter to the Washington Post, which resulted in an immediate phone call from a team executive to try and placate me.
No amount of placating worked. Everyone saw this as a disingenuous money grab in the guise of fan “safety”. This would begin a legacy of treating the team’s supporters as ATMs, which reached a low point during the housing crash of 2008 when Snyder took fans to court over unfulfilled ticket contracts.
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.
Commanders became a coaching graveyard
As an actual football matter – not public relations, franchise value, or legal jeopardy – but in terms of actual on-field football success, here is the most damning number in Dan Snyder’s ownership era with the Washington Commanders.
At various points, he hired four veteran coaches. Marty Schottenheimer, Joe Gibbs, Mike Shanahan, and Ron Rivera.
Those four men, when working for owners other than Snyder, won more than 500 NFL games. They had a regular season winning percentage of over 60 percent. They routinely took their teams to the playoffs. They won multiple Super Bowls.
Under Snyder’s ownership, none left the team with a winning record. That winning percentage of over 60 fell to 43%. They won no championships. Combined, they won a single playoff game. Prior to working with the Commanders, those four coaches had won 32 playoff games.
Sure, Schottenheimer and Shanahan may have been too stubborn. Gibbs and Rivera may have been too old-fashioned. But those guys did not forget how to coach. The common denominator was the owner. He simply was incapable of creating a workplace that spawned success.
So it became increasingly difficult to find coaches willing to join Washington. That reached its laughable zenith with the desperation hiring of Jim Zorn after Gibbs left. But what’s even worse is how Snyder’s poisonous leadership has allowed so many great young coaches to flee.
At various points in the past decade, the Commanders have employed Sean McVay, Kevin O’Connell, and Matt LaFleur. All have gone on to become successful NFL head coaches for other teams.
Perhaps it was inevitable that those three would have to leave to get their shot at the top spot. But Kyle Shanahan was a different story. He was supposed to become the Washington head coach after his father called it quits.
It was all set up. But Snyder dynamited that situation.
The elder Shanahan wasn’t blameless, but it all began with the owner. He simply couldn’t hold onto to a good thing when he had it.
And so the Commanders have won two playoff games in Snyder’s 24 years as owner, the last one coming in 2005. Meanwhile, out in San Francisco, operating largely with mediocre quarterback talent, the younger Shanahan has won six playoff games – in the last four seasons.
He was here. And he fled.
The Washington Commanders name saga
The headache associated with the nickname that had been in place since before the franchise even came to Washington was bound to engender waves of anger. Both sides of the debate had passionate believers whose minds were not going to be changed.
Navigating such a public relations minefield would require great skill and finesse. Sadly, Dan Snyder may have been the worst-equipped owner in the entire league to handle it.
It wasn’t simply Snyder’s penchant for hiding when things got difficult. That certainly hurt, because, as discussed earlier, it made him come off as being too thin-skinned to take whatever criticism would come.
But he made things even worse by posing as a tough guy. Back in May 2013, Snyder was quoted in USA Today as saying:
"“We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER – you can use caps.”"
As we all know, that proved to be an idle boast. Seven years later, with mounting public and financial pressure, the franchise announced the name would in fact be changed.
As has been typical throughout his tenure, the statement came from the franchise at large, and not from the owner. Though I believe he did issue one or two brief statements, most of the explaining was left to others.
George Bush once lost a presidential election in large part because he issued an ironclad statement about taxes (the “Read my lips” quote), and then reversed course. Apparently, Snyder didn’t learn much from that. He wanted to come across as being strong, and it backfired in spectacular fashion.
Look at how this played out. Supporters of the name change were not about to give the owner credit due to his antagonistic statements of the past. They pointed out that it was only when FedEx led a corporate revolt that he suddenly saw the light. And his few remaining fans, who took pride in their owner’s willingness to preserve something they valued, felt betrayed.
Most fans in the middle – which I believe constituted most fans overall – just shook their heads at one more self-inflicted wound that left their beloved franchise an irrelevant laughing stock. Leave it to Snyder to take a bad situation and make it a lot worse.
Overseeing the Commanders’ toxic workplace culture
The preceding items have been largely public relations fiascos or management missteps. This topic opens the possibility of criminal behavior.
Prior to 2020, there had been occasional rumblings. Suggestions of improper workplace activities related to female staff and the cheerleaders. But these rumors were brushed aside more often than not.
Then, in July 2020, 15 former employees leveled detailed charges of a pattern of sexual harassment that could no longer be ignored. The charges dated back as far as 2006.
In typical fashion, Dan Snyder was absent from any team response. There was a statement issued – with no names attached – which claimed that the team takes any such allegations seriously. They commissioned their own investigation, which they assured everyone, would get to the bottom of it all.
Richard Mann and Alex Santos were among the executives named in the report that were suddenly fired. Play-by-play man Larry Michael, also named in the report, announced his retirement. These were just the first of the dominos to fall.
This issue is ongoing. We do not know where it will end, and I will not speculate as to what may still come out. I will only say that we now have enough evidence to know that Snyder presided over a workplace that was openly hostile to women.
And that’s the most charitable read on this.
As with all other problems, Snyder has tried to cover it up with impotent PR moves and attempted to hide in hopes that the furor will simply die off. It seems apparent to me that up until now, the NFL has been complicit in this strategy.
Selling the franchise may be the ultimate move along these lines. It appears that Snyder is once again running from an ugly story in hopes that it will disappear. At least this time, he has almost universal support across the Washington Commanders fanbase.