Dan Snyder Just Casually Giving Employees a Bag of Apples Instead of a Holiday Bonus
Post - Around Redskins Park, the team’s headquarters in Ashburn, turnover is not limited to the team’s coaching staff, particularly in recent years. The team’s media guide in 2008 listed 143 team employees not related to football operations. Five years later, fewer than 20 remain. There are myriad reasons. While the Redskins have never been shy to pay millions to football players, former employees who’ve also worked elsewhere in the NFL say salaries for the rest of the operation lag behind many teams. Ex-staffers reported cutbacks during the recent recession — multiple employees reported receiving bags of apples one year in lieu of holiday bonuses — but Tony Wyllie, the Redskins’ senior vice president of communications, noted that a lot of companies tightened their belts during the recession. “The Washington Redskins at that point as well as now have one of the largest staffs in all of sports,” Wyllie said. Several former employees said job security was a constant fear. “I never worked in such a nervous building before,” one former employee said. “You never saw anyone who came in and was like, ‘Wow, great to be here today.’ It was grim faces all the time. It was a dozen Bob Cratchits.”
I blog a lot about Dan Snyder. But many of you might have never had a proper introduction to who exactly Dan Snyder the person is. And that’s it in a nutshell. Bags of apples for the secretaries so he could pay Albert Haynesworth 100 million dollars. Some rotten fruit for the sales reps so he could give Donovan McNabb a 5 year, 78 million dollar extension. So Dan Snyder of him.
The Post article says some other great bits.
Some suggest he lacks the interpersonal skills to effectively communicate with those below him. One oft-told story around Redskins Park dates from Snyder’s early days as an owner. Snyder had tired of defensive coordinator Mike Nolan’s bland play-calling. “Too vanilla,” he called it, and to illustrate the point, he left a gallon of ice cream on Nolan’s desk. Nolan chuckled, but later that season, the owner still wasn’t pleased and sent more ice cream, three five-gallon drums this time, with the note: “I wasn’t joking. I do not like vanilla.”
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A businessman telling a defensive coordinator how to do his job. Snyder was really just trying to play Madden from the owner’s box. DO MORE BLITZES! Engage 8!
Prior to Shanahan, Snyder played a much more active role in the draft process, even traveling at times with his personnel officials to scout college players. In 2007, he had his heart set on drafting quarterback Brady Quinn out of Notre Dame. “It took a week or so to convince him that we shouldn’t do that,” one former staffer said. “Then he wanted Teddy Ginn,” an Ohio State wide receiver. Quinn has played for five teams in seven seasons, while Ginn has started just five games in the past four years. The next season, still in need of a wide receiver, the team targeted Oklahoma’s Malcolm Kelly in the second round, though the medical staff had major health concerns. When they took Michigan State wideout Devin Thomas 34th overall before nabbing Kelly 17 picks later, they passed on Jordy Nelson, whom several others in the football operation preferred, according to someone who was with the team at the time. Hobbled by knee problems for two seasons, Kelly was released in 2011 after posting just 28 receptions. In six seasons with the Green Bay Packers since going 36th overall in the draft, Nelson has 302 catches for 4,590 yards and 36 touchdowns. This season, Nelson had career highs with 85 receptions for 1,314 yards. “It’s hard to say that anyone can restrain him when he wants to do something,” said one former Snyder employee, who’d worked at Snyder Communications, of the Redskins owner. “You cannot stop impulsive people from doing what they want to do.”
And there we have it. Snyder couldn’t get his guys Brady Quinn or Ted Ginn, but he got his dude in Malcolm Kelly when the football people were like uhhhh maybe this guy Jordy Nelson is the better pick. If Veruca Snyder wants a golden goose, he will get his golden goose, and he doesn’t care if he’s dumped down the bad egg filter in the process. If he doesn’t change, here’s to another 15 years of mediocrity.