Dearest Dan Snyder,
Even addressing you by your real name is giving you too much respect, but in this letter to you I have to be as cordial while letting you know why it’s a blessing you no longer own the Commanders. Growing up in D.C., I was proud to call myself a Redskins fan and made it a day around the games on Sundays because I loved the team. I still very much do, but as the years went on with your tenure, apathy started to settle in and I wasn’t the only as evidenced of the season tickets waiting list going all the way down to zero. That happened because of you, it happened because of how terrible of an owner you were. I won’t fully go into details about every crappy thing you have done, but I will certainly highlight some of the biggest ones. Shall we?
For starters, two playoff wins in 24 years. TWO! That’s it! That goes to show your ineptitude and stupidity in running a football team. One of your better hires, Marty Schottenheimer, you fired after one year. Good job trying to wear the big boy pants on that one Danny Boy, but look where Steve Spurrier took the team. You even fired Norv Turner who had a winning record at the time because he wasn’t playing Jeff George who you might remembered was absolutely atrocious. By the way, Brad Johnson won a Super Bowl. D’oh! Even if you had given Mike Shanahan more time, he might’ve won a Super Bowl considering all the talent he collected. And let’s not even talk about how you felt Vinny Cerrato was a better person to be the general manager over Charley Casserly. Yikes! Want to talk about Bruce Allen? Yeah, didn’t think so, plus it didn’t help you alienating and eventually firing Scott McCloughan who was putting together a pretty talented side, but I guess “winning off the field”, whatever the hell that meant, was more important. Oh, the most egregious of all was hiring Jim Zorn over Steve Spagnuolo, Jim Fassel, Steve Mariucci, Jim Schwartz, Jim Mora, and freaking Pete Carroll. Plus you could’ve hired Sean McDermott for head coach, but instead you went with Jay Gruden. Oh boy! This isn’t Madden.
Then there was your treatment of quarterbacks. Treating Robert Griffin III as a god only led to him being alienated by his teammates. Plus you traded away not one, not two, but three first round draft picks to get him! Jeff George again? Do I even have to repeat myself? Dwayne Haskins? You were advised to not draft him and yet you took him and he showed how immature he was. Oh, yeah how well did that go with him under center? You should’ve listened to Kyle Smith. Donovan McNabb? The dude was well past his prime, but you lived still in 2004 apparently. I understand how important the position is, but you had Brad Johnson, Kirk Cousins, and even Jason Campbell. While what happened to Alex Smith is not your fault, you still had three other guys who could’ve led this team to postseason success.
Cringing now? Hoo boy, I am just getting started!
Let’s talk about charging fans admission to training camp and on top of that charging fans to park. Yeah, that’s a load of BS. Then you had vendors sell expired peanuts to fans from an airline that had gone out of business a year earlier. Owning a flagship sports station because you wanted to propagandize how “well” the team was doing and to make you look like a god because you wanted to control the narrative and the coverage of the team. You had great coverage with the Washington Post, but your ego got in the way and one of the best newspapers wasn’t able to gain as much access because you were upset the paper didn’t make you look like a messiah. You sued a 72 year old lady who was a season ticket holder all just because she wasn’t able to keep up with the payments, dude she was 72 years old! Cutting Brian Mitchell for Deion Sanders was a really bad one. Then there was having the cheerleaders in Costa Rica pose topless with clients watching the shoot and then had them accompany the sponsors, which is pretty much exploitation and prostitution. Good job being the richest pimp. Then there was how you handled the Trent Williams cancer scare situation. Way to piss off one of the best offensive lineman in the game and then letting him go to another team. You managed to botch the name controversy even more than it should’ve been. You created such a toxic culture in the organization, that it came to no shock to us fans, that the Washington Post had the full details of all the sexual harassment and verbal abuse towards women (not to mention you sexually harassing a woman that worked for you). That egregiously pathetic Sean Taylor statue. And lastly, you managed to be investigated by the U.S. government about all the shady handling of your money and financial improprieties by using the team as your personal piggy bank and to not to mention you essentially stealing money from other teams in the league. No wonder why Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay says they had enough to remove you. The conservative thinktank American Enterprise Institute even said that you ran the team as a “leading exemplar of this tendency toward irrationality” as well as “seriously mismanaged”. Maybe you should’ve listened to others, but instead your ego got the best of you.
Man, after reading that over it made me cringe even more as to how bad you really were. Maybe let that marinate for you and realize how awful your tenure really was. If you think in the 24 years you owned the team that you had any kind of success, then you are out of your mind. Even your stupidity alienated you with leaking the Jon Gruden emails to the New York Times just because you hated the Washington Post in what was hilariously easy to figure out.
Now do you see why us fans wanted you out? You were a disgrace. You were the worst owner the franchise and this league has ever seen. Good riddance Danny Boy and Happy Thanksgiving to you too.
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