Gruden Rips Washington’s Snyder For Making 'Draft Picks Off His Yacht'
Jay Gruden, the former Washington Fooball Team head coach now a Jacksonville assistant, was trying to make a point about the positive qualities of former WFT front-office exec Kyle Smith.
Instead, he took a sharp poke at WFT owner Daniel Snyder.
“Every year that I was there, we had a pretty good draft class, with a couple of exceptions,” Gruden said, via The Washington Post. “[Smith] was really good about listening to the coaches because the coaches also did evaluations. … When it came our time to pick, we’d always talk about the picks, where we’d like to go, what happens if [the player] is gone, and did all our scenarios.
And then [Snyder] would come in off his yacht and make the pick.”
Gruden is, of course, tying together two true tales:
One, the owner truly was single-handedly responsible for the Dwayne Haskins first-round draft selection in 2019. (Want the background, "vomit'' and all? Read below.)
READ MORE: Vomit & 3 Better Choices: Inside The WFT Drafting Of Dwayne Haskins
READ MORE: NFL Draft: Washington Thoughts On The Senior Bowl
Two, it was right about then Snyder was in the news for buying a $250 million yacht.
Billionaires should buy yachts. Maybe they shouldn't single-handedly make draft picks.
Gruden is now gone, and so is Smith, the former VP of Player Personnel in Washington, as he is leaving the team to take the same role with the Atlanta Falcons. New to the WFT front office are GM Martin Mayhew and top aide Marty Hurney. But the most important "newness''?
Snyder has ceded control of football decisions to coach Ron Rivera and his newly-assembled front office. The yacht, we assume, however, is still afloat.
