Daniel Snyder: Vote to Expel? Pressure to Resign? Or Absolutely Nothing?
Commanders owner Daniel Snyder will be subpoenaed by the congressional oversight committee, as the heat continues to turn up on Snyder and, by extension, his fellow owners.
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The following transcript is an excerpt from The MMQB NFL Podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.
Gary Gramling: [Roger Goodell] was in front of the House Oversight Committee in Washington, DC. He did it via Zoom. But man, this thing went off the rails so quickly. And we can get in some of the wackiness in a little bit—uh, certainly if you want to somehow feel even worse about our federal government at this point, this is a pretty good viewing. But the big takeaway I wanna get to here is Daniel Snyder. Obviously, he had been invited to testify and declined. Now according to Carolyn Maloney, the U.S. rep from New York's 12th district, Daniel Snyder will now be subpoenaed for a deposition next week as this continues to drag out all the just awful behavior that has been alleged, what went on in the Commanders' front office, and all the allegations that Daniel Snyder participated in and knew about all of this. But I guess my question now is: It seems like we've been hurtling toward this end point, but then the end point keeps on sort of hurtling back with it. Is there any chance that Daniel Snyder is pushed out, in the way that Jerry Richardson was? I dunno, what's the metaphor I'm looking for here? It's like, we're piling stuff up and it's, Oh, when's it gonna hit the ceiling? And then you look up and, oh wait, there is no ceiling. It's just gonna continue to pile up to infinity.
Albert Breer: I don't know what the analogy is, but I honestly thought it was notable going back to the Super Bowl that Roger actually explained the process for voting an owner out. Because Roger's so careful about what he says, especially when it concerns, let's call them his 31 bosses (you know, the Packers obviously not applying to that). I can't imagine he actually would go through the process for voting an owner out the way he voluntarily did in L.A. a few days before the Super Bowl, without getting sign-off from some of the other owners. Now, my understanding is they haven't come close to the idea of actually sitting down and having a vote because I don't think any other owner wants to set that precedent. I mean, like these guys all have dirt under their fingernails. They don't want other people digging through their trash. I don't think that they wanna go through the process of voting one of their own out. But that doesn't mean they're above trying to pressure him and try to raise the temperature in the room to the point where Daniel Snyder would feel the amount of shame it would take to sell a team. And obviously that threshold is a lot higher in this case than it is than it was in the case of Jerry Richardson. What Jerry Richardson did was horrible too. You can say this for him: A lot of people think that they forced him out—they didn't. A good story ran at SI and he left on his own volition for a lot of the reasons I'm pointing out here. He didn't have a succession plan, so that was part of it. Obviously the value of the franchise was at an all time high. But I think part of it too, was, It's just time for me to walk away. I don't think Snyder's ever gonna feel like that. I don't know if Snyder will ever feel that level of shame. But I wonder how high the temperature is gonna get turned up on him. Cause I do think other owners want him out and want him out without having to vote him out. And so it'll be interesting to see how stuff leaks out over the coming months. If he comes out of this and still has the team, where maybe other owners find creative ways to turn the temperature up to try to force him to sell.
Conor Orr: Gary, do you want me to fix your metaphor?
Gary Gramling: Yeah, please!
Conor Orr: I think I nailed it. So what's going on here is sort of like my sink in college, right? And you know, it's the first time in your life that you live with roommates and someone isn't doing your dishes for you. And they start to pile up and you're just like, Well, we can't physically use the sink, somebody is going to have to wash these dishes. No, you just figure out ways to shove more stuff into the sink and then it just keeps getting higher and higher until one day we just say, let's just throw away all the dishes.
