Daniel Snyder might be hated, but never forget he is also a lesson for all Washington NFL fans.
Snyder has not been a successful owner of the franchise. Purchasing the team in 1999, the strongest person in the building, Charley Casserly, was leaving a few days before Snyder’s opening training camp.
Head coach Norv Turner would be shown the door with three games remaining during the next season (2000). There was a playoff win in the 1999 and 2005 seasons, only two.
Snyder thought he could play “general manager” and ended up making his own deals for aging free agents, getting rid of Marty Schottenheimer following the 2001 season, never bringing a general manager for Steve Spurrier, meddling in the football decisions, leaving Spurrier to say in all his years of coaching the only team he never had control of the roster was his two seasons in Washington.
Snyder spent three first-round draft choices and a second-round choice so he could move up four spots in the 2012 draft to select a quarterback who had not proven he could run any sort of offense from the pocket. He then sided with Robert Griffin against Mike and Kyle Shanahan.
Griffin got his way and got to run an offense he wanted, but never developed as a pocket passer. Thus, he never saw any sort of success or even roster significance again.
Snyder imposed his will in the 2019 NFL draft, insisting the first-round selection be another quarterback. He simply did not understand Dwayne Haskins was not worth that high of a selection.
Mike Shanahan insisted Snyder was also behind the wheel in the Donovan McNabb trade when Andy Reid shrewdly traded away his quarterback to a team within the division.
The “poor” guy simply was wrong so often regarding football personnel and football-related decisions. He would have been so much better off being willing to let his football people do the jobs they were hired to perform.
Perhaps a lesson in this is that while he was confident in his abilities, his decisions cost him dearly time and time again. We, on the other hand, easily can be critical, but our preferences for the team are never actually tested.
For THAT, we can all be thankful as well.