Last week I wrote an article that basically said that even though Redskins owner Dan Snyder hasn’t done a great job — he has made some of the same mistakes over and over — and even though multiple reports say that he has at times treated people unfairly or not been the nicest guy, people should lay off him a bit. The criticism has been relentless and ruthless. It’s all you hear on sports radio nowadays. So from here on out, any move the Redskins make will be scrutinized and criticized much more than before because of the missteps of the past 12 years.
The latest controversy has been Snyder suing a writer from the City Paper for defamation. I simply pointed out in my article on Examiner.com that there were several items in the article that were exaggerated. I also said that listening to the drivel on sports radio about how Snyder made a mistake in suing, and all of the other anti-Snyder talk just gets ridiculously boring. Whatever your take, there were a lot of comments.
I probably didn’t make it clear enough that the article in the City Paper was on target on a lot of items, but even that is old news. Snyder has hurt himself, I believe, by rarely doing interviews, and not responding to criticism in the past. When he does do an interview he comes across as a good guy so he should do more of them. If I were him, I just wouldn’t ever listen to sports radio and try to forget the past and just move forward.
Yesterday I was interviewed on the afternoon drive talk show on Toronto’s AM 640 about this.
It has been frustrating being a Redskins fan for the last 12 years – make that the last 18, during which time they have only made the playoffs three times. But two of those times were under Joe Gibbs 2.0, so you can’t fault Snyder for that hire, which at the time was a great coup. The Shanahan hire may ultimately also pay dividends though it got off to a rocky start last year.
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