Tipping level – How Dan Snyder just about survived as Commanders proprietor

AS HE HOPPED on a choice with Roger Goodell, Las Vegas Raiders proprietor Mark Davis had incorrect plans to fireplace his head mentor.

It used to be the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 8, 2021. A couple of hours previous, The Wall Boulevard Magazine had printed a blockbuster tale about an electronic mail Raiders mentor Jon Gruden had despatched 10 years previous, when he labored as a colour analyst for ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.” Gruden, in an change with Washington’s common supervisor Bruce Allen, had known as NFLPA government director DeMaurice Smith “Dumboriss” and described him the usage of a racist trope. To maximum witnesses, Gruden’s dismissal gave the impression of an issue of when, no longer if. However Davis was hoping to — on the very least — decelerate a typhoon from the middle of the typhoon.

Consistent with resources common along with his considering, Davis discovered the tale’s timing suspicious. Why had been emails popping out now? Who had leaked them? And who had probably the most to realize?

“It felt like a setup,” Davis would nearest inform an laborer.

Although league officers in Brandnew York and a couple of group householders had recognized concerning the Gruden emails for months, as a part of the investigation into Commanders proprietor Dan Snyder and the poisonous office tradition inside of his franchise, Davis had discovered of them solely the month prior to the Magazine’s unique, when Raiders president Dan Ventrelle informed him: “We’ve got a problem.”

Then the Magazine tale, Davis polled flow and previous Raiders gamers and team of workers on how they felt about Gruden. Some sought after him long gone; others didn’t. Davis knew Gruden might be crass and profane, the resources mentioned, however in a dating spanning greater than 20 years, he had incorrect reason why to imagine Gruden used to be racist.

So when Davis and Ventrelle took the convention name with Goodell and NFL common recommend Jeff Pash, Davis inclined towards sticking by way of Gruden. However Davis felt instant drive. Consistent with resources with direct wisdom of the decision, Goodell again and again informed Davis, “You have to do something.”

“What are you going to do?” Pash requested.

The statements and questions incensed Davis. He believed the league administrative center had incorrect purview to drive an proprietor to fireplace a head mentor, irrespective of the climate.

“There’s more emails coming,” Goodell informed Davis. “Something has to be done.”

When the decision ended, Davis grew to become to Ventrelle.

“Motherf—er,” Davis mentioned in exasperation.

On Monday, Oct. 11, The Brandnew York Instances printed a tale revealing unused emails during which Gruden wrote that Goodell used to be “clueless” and “anti-football” and described him in anti-gay and misogynistic phrases. That night, Gruden resigned, driven by way of Davis. Gruden would quickly record a lawsuit towards the NFL and Goodell that accused the commissioner of “directly leaking” his emails to hurt his popularity and pressure him out, one thing league officers have again and again denied.

What angered Davis greater than the rest, he nearest mentioned, used to be being stunned by way of the emails months upcoming Goodell, Pash and alternative householders, together with Snyder, knew about them. It perceived to Davis as though he and the Raiders had been collateral injury in what he noticed as Goodell’s yearslong try to give protection to Dan Snyder, of all householders, in any respect prices.

“F— the NFL,” Davis nearest informed Gruden. “And f— Dan Snyder.”

‘A big miscalculation’

FIFTEEN DAYS AFTER Gruden resigned below drive, Goodell denied in a closed-door, owners-only assembly in midtown Big apple that he or any person within the league administrative center had leaked the damning emails. The point of interest of hypothesis across the league grew to become to Snyder. In October 2022, ESPN reported that the league believed Snyder used to be in the back of the leaks. A congressional file latter December contained testimony that still pointed towards the Commanders because the supply of the spray.

Months of interviews with executives, legal professionals, brokers, and league and group officers, maximum of whom asked anonymity, disclose {that a} greater solid of family may have performed a task within the leaking. The ones accused by way of the resources come with:

• Supremacy NFL executives, together with Goodell. Assets, together with one in possession, informed ESPN that NFL executives licensed the shed of a few emails. 4 householders informed ESPN they imagine Goodell used to be individually concerned. NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy repeated the league’s denial, in community and in prison responses, that it used to be accountable. “Neither the NFL nor the commissioner leaked Coach Gruden’s offensive emails,” McCarthy informed ESPN. In a remark to ESPN, Gruden mentioned, “it’s ridiculous the league thought they could cherry-pick emails from years ago, when I wasn’t even a coach and try to end my career.” He added: “At a minimum, I deserved the opportunity to respond and receive some due process.”

• NFL Avid gamers Affiliation eminent DeMaurice Smith. Smith bragged that he used to be chargeable for leaking the racist electronic mail relating to him, an laborer with direct wisdom informed ESPN. The leaked electronic mail used to be printed at the similar month Smith confronted a union vote to store his task. Smith declined to remark via union spokesperson George Atallah.

• Snyder, in an operation run by way of his Brandnew York regulation company Reed Smith and with backup from Desiree Perez, the CEO of Roc Crowd, which has a $25 million assurance to backup the NFL on social justice problems. A Reed Smith legal professional informed one supply, prior to and upcoming the leaks, concerning the company’s involvement and Perez’s alleged function, which the supply didn’t outline. Attorneys with direct wisdom of Reed Smith operations and Perez’s twin function — as an influential NFL guide and a Snyder confidant — informed ESPN the crowd dusted off techniques it had old in Alex Rodriguez’s lawsuit towards Main League Baseball years in the past.

  However Jordan Siev, a spouse at Reed Smith, mentioned that the company “never leaked any” of the emails and that “neither Dan Snyder nor anyone on his or the team’s behalf ever requested or authorized that Reed Smith do so. Any assertion to the contrary is false.” Perez declined repeated alternatives to talk with an ESPN reporter. An legal professional representing her mentioned in a letter to an ESPN legal professional that “Ms. Perez had no role whatsoever in the leaking of any emails, or in any discussion or decision to leak any emails.”

  Assets mentioned Snyder, who used to be serving a punishment upcoming a league investigation had uncovered a poisonous office tradition on the group, was hoping the emails would deflect blame for office problems to Allen generation currying partial with Goodell by way of giving the commissioner a probability to get rid of Gruden, an established antagonist. Commanders spokesperson Jean Medina declined to reply to any questions concerning the leaks however issued a remark that “ownership is working constructively with the League to finalize the sale of the Washington Commanders to the Josh Harris Group and will continue to support the organization through the transition process.”

The fresh leakers’ identities stay unknown as legal professionals and managers level to every alternative like a round firing squad, with enough of smoke however incorrect smoking gun. Everybody who knew concerning the emails had obvious motives to spray.

Regardless of how the leaks had been engineered, more than one resources draw an instantaneous form from emails that trickled out over a couple of days in October 2021 to Snyder’s accident and his approaching $6.05 billion sale of the Commanders. Inside days of the leaks, a congressional committee introduced a wide-ranging investigation of the Commanders and the NFL that compelled Goodell, Allen and Snyder to testify below commitment. The congressional inquiry would supremacy to a federal legal investigation into alleged monetary misconduct by way of Snyder and the group. As drive fastened, Snyder bragged to friends that he had gathered dirt on his fellow owners and Goodell that would “blow up” the league. Unfazed, householders in spite of everything all however compelled Snyder to promote his loved franchise.

Even if more than one family paid a worth — or nonetheless may just — for a line of leaks that proceed to threaten the NFL within the Nevada courts, no person suffered larger blowback than Snyder.

“He was free and clear that October — he just had to wait out his suspension and let everything blow over,” a supply near to Snyder mentioned. “A major miscalculation. Without the leaks, he might just have survived.”

‘Dictating his punishment’

IN JUNE 2021, Dan Snyder’s prison group and choose league executives collected at NFL headquarters in Big apple. In survival method, Snyder’s group of legal professionals ready a protection towards the findings from legal professional Beth Wilkinson’s investigation into the franchise. The former summer season, he had rented Wilkinson to appear into the group, a progress to stock the league administrative center at arm’s distance. However the league temporarily had assumed keep an eye on of Wilkinson’s inquiry and quietly struck an accord with Snyder’s group — “a common interest agreement” that the landlord and the league would percentage all proof and subject material gathered and that neither the NFL nor Snyder would shed any data from the inquiry with out the alternative’s consent.

Even if it perceived to householders and managers that the league and Snyder had labored in combination to reduce the investigation’s have an effect on, palpable rigidity existed. In league circles, Goodell gave the impression to be rising weary of Snyder. All over the pandemic, it turned into a working funny story amongst some householders and managers that after Snyder spoke on videoconference screams, Goodell regarded annoyed or crazy. However now, Snyder moved past merely demanding the league administrative center to inflicting severe issues.

When Snyder’s legal professionals — famed protection legal professional Joe Tacopina, assisted by way of Reed Smith companions Siev and James McCarroll — started to turn a line of slides, the ones within the room had been shocked, in step with resources. What used to be offered used to be no longer a protection towards any of Wilkinson’s findings made towards Snyder; it used to be a line of screenshots of probably embarrassing emails and texts from a number of govern league executives, together with Goodell’s govern lieutenant, Pash. The reason, in step with a supply with firsthand wisdom, used to be to argue the hypocrisy of league officers judging Snyder. The techniques had been so heartless that some lawyers felt uncomfortable. Even if not one of the content material used to be sexist, anti-gay or detailed, the sign used to be sunny: If Goodell didn’t do what Snyder sought after on the subject of dealing with the Wilkinson file and punishment, those emails and texts can be leaked.

It turned into recognized in league circles because the “Blackmail PowerPoint.”

League executives and others concerned within the case had been enraged once they had been knowledgeable of Snyder’s techniques, more than one resources informed ESPN. From that time on, any direct communique from the league administrative center to Snyder needed to be legally vetted. However Snyder’s PowerPoint proved efficient. A couple of govern NFL executives had i’m sure Goodell to provide Snyder a stiff and long punishment. However because the generation for pronouncing Snyder’s punishment neared, Goodell started to rethink.

By means of overdue June, Snyder used to be “dictating his punishment” right down to each feature, in step with a supply with wisdom of the deliberations. Felony resources mentioned that Snyder and his legal professionals had been consulted by way of NFL executives within the drafting of the inside track shed, with Snyder weighing in on guarantee alternatives. It used to be an unusual and collaborative procedure, as in comparison with the best way the league most often metes out punishment — significantly within the one-sided judgments upcoming Bountygate and Deflategate. Snyder and his group had been proud of the consequences, nearest bragging that the self-discipline used to be unusually luminous.

Within the overdue afternoon of Thursday, July 1, prior to bliss weekend, the league introduced Snyder’s punishment. He would step clear of day by day operations “for at least the next several months” and pay a $10 million fantastic — with proceeds reaping benefits Washington, D.C., branch nonprofit organizations. The guarantee “suspension” used to be by no means old. In a information shed, the NFL praised Snyder for having “recognized the need for change” and “undertaken important steps” to support the group’s tradition. None of Wilkinson’s particular findings had been absolved, regardless of agreements she had given observers, together with former group cheerleaders, that the total file can be community. The drafted suggestions urging the NFL to pressure Snyder to promote his group had successfully been buried. A Washington radio station reported that it had acquired screenshots of the suggestions from Wilkinson’s draft file that incorporated urging the NFL to pressure Snyder to promote his group. However the NFL insists incorrect written report ever existed.

Her paintings now entire, Wilkinson grew to become an estimated 650,000 Commanders emails over to the league. A handful of senior league executives oversaw IT specialists who culled Gruden’s offensive emails. With the exception of Snyder’s legal professionals at Reed Smith, just a handful of league team of workers, most commonly within the prison segment, had get admission to to the emails. For months upcoming that, resources mentioned, the emails had been the supply of gossip amongst householders and managers — till summaries of the emails had been proven to Roger Goodell in early October.

‘We’d like your backup’

LONG BEFORE ANY leaked emails, the NFL enlisted Jay-Z’s leisure corporate, Roc Crowd, to backup clear up a large illness. The league in 2018 remained on protection from the fallout of then-President Donald Trump focused on the NFL over former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and a tiny staff of gamers kneeling in protest all through the nationwide anthem. The tranquil protest of police brutality and the political response to it contributed to eroding TV scores and strained relationships with sponsors. Goodell had long discussions with numerous teams of gamers about systemic racism and social justice, however the NFL used to be now suffering to search out tactics to be proactive. Brandnew England Patriots proprietor Robert Kraft, amongst alternative householders, concept the league wanted out of doors backup. Kraft consulted Jay-Z, who had known as out the NFL upcoming ESPN reported that then-Texans proprietor Bob McNair had mentioned of gamers in a closed-door assembly: “We can’t have the inmates running the prison.”

Consistent with resources, Kraft informed Jay-Z, “The NFL isn’t picking up on these social issues. We need your help.”

Kraft attached Jay-Z and Roc Crowd to Goodell. Quickly, resources informed ESPN, the league partnered with Roc Crowd in a $25 million, five-year offer to reshape the Tremendous Bowl halftime display, assemble tune fasten to the season, enlarge the league’s social justice time table and, in all probability most significantly, progress past the talk round groups’ unwillingness to signal Kaepernick. At an August 2019 information convention at NFL headquarters pronouncing Roc Crowd’s partnership with the league, Jay-Z informed journalists, with Goodell sitting within reach, “I think we’ve moved past kneeling.”

Supremacy league executives and a minimum of a couple of householders imagine the alliance has labored, past the greater than $250 million the league has raised to devote towards social justice reasons. Executives imagine that Roc Crowd has raised the bar with Tremendous Bowl halftime displays the presen few years. The association with Jay-Z has helped the NFL support its symbol on race with enthusiasts, in step with an government out of doors the NFL with wisdom of the league’s inner information.

The partnership additionally gave Perez, the Roc Crowd CEO, an observable door to the league administrative center. Perez had conquer a legal presen to form a name as one in all leisure’s maximum robust executives. In 1994, she were arrested for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, nearest running as a DEA informant and serving 9 months in jail for a probation violation. She used to be a number of the dozens of convicted felons Trump pardoned a month prior to he left administrative center.

Some within the league administrative center believed Roc Crowd had necessarily appointed itself because the league’s advertising and marketing arm. And a few league officers believed Roc Crowd workers handled NFL team of workers dismissively, angering those that sincerely sought after to backup in finding answers to the league’s social justice illness.

Goodell refused to again his team of workers when rigidity arose between the league and Roc Crowd in 2020, in lieu telling his fees to simply paintings it out. Roc Crowd owned all of the leverage. The NFL couldn’t have the funds for to endure a fallout with Jay-Z, no longer upcoming the Kaepernick controversy, and no longer upcoming how a lot it had publicized their partnership. Plus, Goodell perceived to admire and agree with Perez, inviting her to key conferences, an motion that mystified some householders and managers. “The NFL became afraid of Roc,” mentioned a former NFL reputable, who provides that the partnership has been “a mess.”

Perez turned into a relied on confidant to Dan and Tanya Snyder and, in step with a letter from a group legal professional to ESPN latter December, sits at the board of the Commanders. Jason Wright, the primary Dull group president in NFL historical past for Washington in 2020, rented Greg Resh, a former Roc Crowd eminent monetary officer, to be his CFO and, ultimately, eminent running officer. Roc Crowd and Snyder are each purchasers of Reed Smith, a company with a name for taking an competitive means by and for well-known purchasers. Prior to now, Perez and Reed Smith had been allegedly concerned about leaking paperwork to journalists and hanging personal investigators on now-MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to backup Rodriguez’s lawsuit towards Main League Baseball.

Reed Smith’s brass-knuckles popularity appealed to Dan Snyder, who within the fall of 2021 used to be impatient to go back to his group.

Snyder thought that his banishment used to be intended to latter just a hour and that he will have to were ready to go back to customary, resources mentioned. He attended each sport all through his unclear banishment, although he wasn’t noticeable at the ground as common. Because the 2021 familiar season neared its midpoint, Snyder thought to be his punishment served and anticipated a complete go back to visibility and attendance at league conferences.

“He didn’t think that was part of the terms he had worked out,” a supply near to Snyder mentioned.

ESPN nearest reported that Snyder’s legal professional, John Brownlee of Holland & Knight, thought that Snyder’s punishment used to be over as of Nov. 1, 2021. However Goodell refused to permit him again to league conferences. If Snyder will have lain low till the top of the season, householders and managers informed ESPN, he may simply have retained his group.

However Snyder couldn’t withstand. Assets mentioned they had been informed Snyder and the NFL noticed alternative in publicizing racist and anti-gay emails from one of the vital league’s maximum chief head coaches.

The hope, one supply mentioned, used to be that the leaks would “divert attention from this situation with Snyder and give room for everybody to lay down their swords. … This was a hatchet job — a gift wrapped by Snyder for Goodell, to get back into Goodell’s good graces on the suspension.”

The supply used to be informed by way of an legal professional concerned that Perez, in the meantime, noticed the probability to backup the commissioner: “Goodell and the league wanted to off Gruden and seem like they were tough on racism.

“This used to be a present.”

‘Don’t go with this story’

EARLY IN THE week of Oct. 4, senior league executives provided summaries of some of the worst Gruden emails to Goodell. Senior league sources insisted that the emails shared with Goodell were to remain confidential.

That plan lasted until late Thursday afternoon, Oct. 7. Gruden was walking off the practice field when he got a call from Davis that The Wall Street Journal had obtained one email he had sent a decade earlier. Gruden immediately called his longtime agent, Bob LaMonte. “He may just slightly communicate,” LaMonte recalled. LaMonte then called Andrew Beaton, the Journal reporter. “Have you ever talked to Jon?” LaMonte said he asked Beaton. The answer was not yet. “You will have to communicate to Jon.”

Gruden immediately assumed the league was responsible for the leak, a final “blackballing” by Goodell, he told associates.

The Gruden email disparaging Smith in racist terms was about to be published within a few days of Goodell’s review — a coincidence that was hard to miss, league officials privately acknowledged. League sources declined to say whether Goodell had shared the emails with anyone.

Raiders officials called the league office, trying to understand what had happened. The league immediately sent 11 of Gruden’s emails to the Raiders for review, in care of Dan Ventrelle, then the team president and general counsel, the sources said.

Later Thursday night, Beaton called Gruden, who was out to dinner with his wife, Cindy, in the Southern Highlands neighborhood of Las Vegas.

Gruden told an associate he pleaded with Beaton, “Don’t walk with this tale. … You’re going to ruin family’s lives,” and Beaton replied, “That is the top of the iceberg.”

Also on Thursday, Goodell gave Smith a heads-up that a Journal reporter had the Gruden email about him, a league source said.

On Friday afternoon, Oct. 8, the Journal published its story, and Gruden instantly became the face of racism in the NFL. Race was a subtext of Smith’s 14-year tenure — players elected retired business executive Lloyd Howell to replace Smith on June 28 — as he was often the only Black man in the room while negotiating against mostly white owners and executives.

At the time, the NFL reacted to the leak without acknowledging that it had prior knowledge of the emails or that there were any league communications with the Raiders or Smith. “The e-mail from Jon Gruden denigrating DeMaurice Smith is catastrophic, abhorrent and entirely opposite to the NFL’s values,” McCarthy, the league spokesperson, said in a statement.

The leak came just as Smith was in danger of being voted out of his job by team player representatives. A committee vote on his future ended in a 7-7 tie, triggering a full vote of player reps. For years, Smith had faced stiff criticism among members over the perception that the league had outmaneuvered him on two consecutive collective bargaining agreements. Owners and league executives viewed him as an asset — and wanted him to continue as executive director. Goodell and Smith also have become closer in the past few years since they found a way to have a season played during the pandemic. An owner told an associate that the league hoped the emails would help Smith survive.

A lawyer who frequently works with the league said the timing of the leak was “suspicious as a result of obviously it perceived to any person paying consideration that any person used to be seeking to backup De. Who had the motivation for De to stock his task? The NFL.”

Within hours of the Journal story, Smith was reelected as NFLPA executive director to a fifth term — by a single vote. Smith later bragged that the leak had worked, a source told ESPN.

The Journal’s scoop shook the league, with owners and executives wondering who was responsible for the leak and pointing fingers. Bruce Allen, from his home in Arizona, called the league office to complain that his email with Gruden had been leaked. Senior vice president and special counsel for investigations Lisa Friel told Allen that Snyder’s team had leaked. “We didn’t do it on the league administrative center,” Friel told Allen, as he would later testify before Congress. “It got here out in their aspect.”

A source who spoke to Pash, the NFL’s general counsel, on the day of the Journal story said he “used to be wrathful concerning the spray” and insisted it had not come from the league office. Pash, who declined an interview request through a league spokesperson, told the source he believed it had come “from Snyder’s regulation company and Desiree Perez.”

Later that day, the NFL shared server access to thousands more emails with the Raiders, a league source said. The source said that only the NFL, key Washington officials and, by that point, the Raiders had access to the server.

At The New York Times, veteran NFL reporter Ken Belson was covering Smith’s reelection bid when the Journal’s story dropped. He went to work trying to find more emails. It was the same afternoon that Goodell told Davis on the conference call that more emails were coming. Three days later, Belson would drop a scoop — co-bylined by Metro section reporter Katherine Rosman — that revealed a new batch of Gruden emails. Some of them were not among the 11 emails shared with the Raiders by the NFL, suggesting another source provided them to the Times, a league source said. A Times spokesperson said that, “as an issue of coverage, The Brandnew York Instances does no longer talk about its sourcing.”

Despite a furious outcry against Gruden on social media, and Davis believing that the league was tacitly pressuring him to dismiss Gruden, by Friday night the coach believed he would survive. He addressed the team. As he reread his old emails, he thought some were funny — “electronic mail chains the place six or seven guys are seeking to produce every alternative snigger pronouncing silly s—” — excluding the racist trope he had used to describe Smith. The coach believed the organization knew who he was, at heart. Davis seemed to agree.

Both men were unaware that another bomb was about to drop — in another story containing leaked emails.

‘We’ve got a problem’

ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Oct. 10, Gruden was back on the Raiders’ sideline, coaching the team to its second straight loss, this time to the Bears 20-9. The coach’s emails overshadowed the game, but he still believed his self-inflicted wounds were survivable. By the next night, when he spoke to Davis, the tone had shifted.

“I were given an electronic mail from The Brandnew York Instances,” Davis said. A story was being prepared about Gruden’s anti-gay emails about Goodell. Davis told friends he had now been backed into a corner. He wasn’t just the owner of the Raiders, who had defensive end Carl Nassib, the first active NFL player to come out as gay, on its roster; Davis also owned the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, with lesbian players, staff and fans.

“We’ve were given a illness,” Davis told Gruden.

Gruden knew it was over. He resigned, ending a 27-year coaching career in disgrace. Later, he reached an undisclosed settlement with the team for the remaining seven years of his 10-year, $100 million contract.

Back in Manhattan, the scandal seemed far from over. Yet more emails were coming out in the Times, this time also targeting Pash — some of the same emails Snyder’s lawyers had shared with league officials during their June PowerPoint presentation. On Thursday, Oct. 14, the Times published another story detailing friendly and casual emails between Pash and Allen, a story people close to Snyder told ESPN was intended to pin the team’s toxic culture problems on Allen and show that the league was complicit and cozy with him. “Dan sought after to shoot Pash,” an ownership source with knowledge of the leaks told ESPN.

Over the years, Goodell has responded to leaks from inside the league office by assembling his top staff and saying the league would be searching its phones and computers for communications with reporters. But after the Gruden leaks, league sources said, Goodell didn’t hold that type of meeting; it’s unclear why not.

Lawyers close to the NFL and to Gruden said the choice to leak to the Times over The Washington Post, a newspaper Snyder hates, was a dead giveaway that Snyder and those around him were behind the leaks. Two sources told ESPN that the same “playbook” that was used in the A-Rod lawsuit against MLB was used to leak the emails published by the Times.

“The similar staff that helped Alex walk upcoming Manfred helped Snyder with the leaks,” said another source who was briefed on how the Gruden leaks were engineered.

Gruden’s legal team went as far as to research prior work by the reporters who received the leaks and found what it saw as favorable stories previously written about Dan and Tanya Snyder and Roc Nation. The Times‘ Rosman wrote a piece in February 2020 about Roc Nation’s partnership with the NFL. The Journal’s Beaton wrote in June 2021 about Dan and Tanya Snyder’s efforts to reform the team’s culture, including a rare on-the-record interview with Dan Snyder. The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to an inquiry from ESPN.

“How silly are you able to be?” said a source close to Snyder who was aware of the previous stories done by the reporters who reported on the leaked emails. “They left a path within the dust.”

But another source who knows Perez disputed her involvement. The source said she had no reason to help Snyder and had distanced herself from him during her time on the Commanders’ board. And Perez “had incorrect wisdom that it [leaking] used to be even being pondered,” her attorney wrote to ESPN’s counsel.

After Gruden was gone, Snyder had hoped to be welcomed back into the league for good. But his plan backfired. Goodell still refused to allow Snyder to attend league meetings.

In fact, the league said in its response to Gruden’s lawsuit, the commissioner had no vendetta against Gruden and the email leak “used to be unequivocally towards the NFL’s excellent pursuits.”

“The emails no longer solely dampened the NFL’s historical season, but additionally stand in stark distinction with the numerous move the League had made lately on range, fairness and inclusion tasks, and ended in detrimental media protection for the League,” the NFL filing says.

Within days of the leaks, Congress opened an investigation into Snyder, the allegations of sexual harassment and financial improprieties, and into Goodell’s handling of the Wilkinson investigation. A source close to the committee told ESPN that, although congressional staff and some lawmakers were already interested in issues around the Commanders and Snyder, the string of leaks moved them to act. Their thinking was, if the leaks showed the kind of material Snyder was weaponizing against his enemies, what else might be out there?

The congressional inquiry thrust the Snyder allegations that had been dormant since July back into the spotlight. In February 2022, several former Washington employees spoke at a congressional roundtable, and one woman, Tiffani Johnston, alleged she had been sexually harassed by Snyder at a team dinner. That revelation caused the NFL to hire Mary Jo White, the former U.S. attorney and head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to conduct a new inquiry of Snyder. White’s report, the findings of which Goodell has pledged repeatedly to release publicly, is expected soon. In June 2022, Goodell testified but Snyder evaded testimony and cruised the Mediterranean on his superyacht. Snyder and Allen also testified under oath before the committee.

A month after his departure, Gruden filed a lawsuit against the NFL, naming Goodell as a defendant and arguing that the league sought to ruin his career by greenlighting the leaked emails, an act LaMonte calls “disgraceful” and “the worst accident task that I’ve ever noticeable.”

“For the league to exist, it needs to be impartial,” said Gruden’s attorney, Adam Hosmer-Henner. “If it favors or disfavors householders, groups or coaches, after all bets are off with admire to civil legal responsibility, antitrust coverage and aggressive integrity. The league used to be no longer impartial or honest with Jon, and our lawsuit is proving there are repercussions.”

Gruden’s enemies list

GRUDEN HAD HIS reasons to believe Goodell and the league office had it out for him. The reasons were planted by Al Davis, who taught Gruden to hate the NFL office from the moment he hired the coach in 1998, eight years before Goodell became commissioner. Davis often told Gruden that the executives at 345 Park Avenue played favorites — classic Raiders paranoia. But it also stemmed from Davis suing the league for antitrust violations. Davis also was convinced that commissioner Pete Rozelle had personally killed a trade before the 1983 draft that would have sent John Elway to the Raiders, refusing to allow a generational quarterback to play for a renegade franchise.

But after becoming one of the game’s best and most celebrated coaches, Gruden saw examples that the old man was right. How else to explain the since-eliminated Tuck Rule — a rule Gruden had never heard of before — that led to a Patriots playoff victory at the Raiders’ expense in 2002? As the years passed, and Gruden won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and eventually moved to the “Monday Evening Soccer” booth in 2009, his hatred of the league office grew. In 2011, Gruden was in an especially bad headspace, he later told friends, furious over the owners’ lockout that offseason and that clubs had voted in 2009 to give teams the option to eliminate pension plans for assistant coaches and other employees.

His frustration came to a boil during a December 2011 Monday night game between the Falcons and the Saints. Atlanta linebacker Curtis Lofton delivered a helmet-to-helmet hit on receiver Marques Colston over the middle and was flagged for unnecessary roughness. To a national TV audience, Gruden stated his displeasure with the call. “I simply don’t know how video games are being officiated,” Gruden said after a play on the next possession.

Gruden’s commentary earned him a call from the league’s Park Avenue headquarters. Over the phone, Goodell asked Gruden to come to the league office to meet with John Madden and Jeff Fisher. The purpose, as the commissioner explained, was for Gruden to get a lesson on player safety.

“You’ve were given to be s—ting me,” Gruden told Goodell.

Gruden wondered whether it was a joke, he later told associates. He needed a player safety lesson from Madden and Fisher, two coaches whose players had delivered some of the ugliest hits in NFL history? Gruden later told friends he felt that Goodell was treating him like a “stooge” who had “by no means coached within the league, like I don’t learn about soccer month in and month out … like I didn’t know a rattling factor about participant protection.”

Gruden never went to the league office for that meeting. The only time he ever met Goodell was years later, when he went to the league office to promote youth football, one of Gruden’s passions. He expected to sit down with Goodell and plan a way to increase participation rates. Instead, Gruden met with an assistant of the commissioner. At the end of the session, Goodell entered a conference room, thanked Gruden for coming and left. Gruden fumed; after that brief meeting, Gruden never spoke again with Goodell.

Gruden burned with suspicion when Mark Davis was elbowed out of the three-team derby to relocate to Los Angeles in 2016 despite owning the most popular team in the market by far. Those feelings intensified in 2020 when Gruden was in his third year back as the Raiders’ head coach. The league fined the Raiders $500,000, fined Gruden $150,000 and stripped the team of a sixth-round draft pick for COVID-19 violations — and that was after the league had fined the team and Gruden a total of $350,000 for violations earlier in the season. (Davis offered to pay Gruden’s $150,000 fine, but league officials insisted Gruden pay it personally, which he did.) Livid, Gruden appealed the fines but ended up writing the checks. After he did, his friend Sean Payton, then the Saints’ coach and who also had been fined for COVID-19 violations, called him and laughed.

“I by no means paid the fantastic,” Payton told Gruden, adding that other coaches also refused to pay. “You’re the one dumbf— that paid the fantastic.”

Gruden continued coaching, disenchanted by what he saw as incompetence and overreach from NFL headquarters, from poor and inconsistent officiating to league office executives pressuring him to hire diverse coaches. Like many coaches, Gruden believed there was a massive disconnect between the dictates of 345 Park Avenue and the way the game is played on the field. In quiet moments, Gruden had designs on one day becoming commissioner. But at heart he knew he was a coach, and he never gave much thought to the offensive language that cost him his job. He knows he’ll probably never be a head coach again; he’s consulting now for the Saints, helping tutor veteran quarterback Derek Carr.

Gruden recently wondered aloud to associates why Dan Snyder would have had it out for him. He knew that Snyder hated Bruce Allen; Snyder had fired Allen “for motive” in 2019, and the two were fighting over whether Snyder needed to pay the remainder of Allen’s contract, sources said. And Gruden knew his brother Jay had shared some unsavory stories earlier in 2021 about working for Snyder, including telling the Post that the owner would “are available in off his yacht” and pick players on the first day of the draft and override his coaches, scouts, everyone. Gruden thought back to an exchange with Snyder years earlier, when he had bumped into Snyder at a restaurant. Gruden believed Snyder was drunk, and he and Gruden started playfully trash-talking, with Snyder calling Gruden fat and Gruden saying he might “dribble his head into the asphalt.” Both men laughed, but Gruden wondered if Snyder had taken offense.

Although the league initially expressed confidence that Gruden’s lawsuit would be dismissed, Gruden has won every court motion against the NFL. The league has tried to move the case to arbitration, its venue of choice, where league-friendly lawyers are in charge and discovery, including communications between league officials and others, is not made public. Gruden’s case is now on appeal by the NFL before the Nevada Supreme Court. A ruling is expected late this year.

League officials told ESPN that regardless of any bad blood between Goodell and Gruden, the commissioner wouldn’t have approved leaking the emails, despite their racist tone. “He nonetheless wouldn’t do it,” a league source said. In NFL circles, it’s believed that if not for the leaks, those emails would have remained buried in what owners and executives commonly refer to as “Jeff Pash’s twilight field.”

Gruden persists in believing that Goodell “driven the code pink” against him, he told associates, adding that the commissioner executed the “shoot shot” on his career, “a bullet to the pinnacle.” Gruden insists he won’t settle his lawsuit for any amount, intending “to burn the home unwell” to reveal the truth about who ordered the leaks. “This used to be a large accident task,” Gruden recently told an associate, often saying Allen had told him the 650,000 emails “incriminate everybody within the league.”

“Why would those family wish to come and get me?” The only explanation, he said, is that he had led a leaguewide whispering campaign of “F— Roger Goodell. And I’m no longer the one one, by way of the best way. … Deep unwell, I knew he — Goodell — had me by way of the balls.”

The way things go

IN LATE MAY 2023, in a suburban Twin Cities hotel, Mark Davis and Roger Goodell head to league meetings. Goodell enters early. Davis is behind, one of the last owners to enter the closed-door session. For the third straight year, Snyder is not present, but for the third straight year, his presence hovers over the proceedings. The sale of the Commanders to Harris isn’t complete, but owners are making clear that it’s a matter of when, not if. In the hotel lobby, Jerry Jones is telling reporters the sale will get done because owners want it to get done.

Privately, owners still expect Snyder to fight until the sale is complete, as he has all along. Sources said that in October 2022 — a full year after the email leak and days after the ESPN report that he had threatened to “fritter up” the league and Goodell with “dust” he had collected — word spread that Snyder planned to show up at owners meetings in lower Manhattan. Goodell insisted that he still was not allowed to do so despite the vague terms of his punishment. Owners enlisted Jones, the only one of them with influence over Snyder, to implore Snyder not to attend. The next day, the Colts’ Jim Irsay told reporters that his fellow owners needed to look into removing Snyder, based on his behavior. Two weeks later, Snyder announced that he was exploring a sale of the team, expected to be approved by owners July 20.

As Davis enters the 2023 spring meeting, he smiles, pleased to be here, as usual. It’s been a tough time since Gruden resigned. The Raiders made the playoffs in 2021 but are 13-18 overall since the emails were leaked. The team is now in the midst of another rebuild and in search of a new franchise quarterback, a reminder of how fragile success is in the NFL. Davis recently brought on a new limited partner: Tom Brady. And despite the league and owners awarding Las Vegas the draft in 2022 and Super Bowl LVIII next February, Davis is still seething over the way he was treated by Goodell, especially compared with how the commissioner treated Snyder. In Goodell’s NFL, almost always, the commissioner grants an owner far greater leniency than any head coach or star player. But even the owners aren’t treated equally. Davis knows it’s the way things go for his family, and for the Raiders.

And as the owners in that exclusive room yearn to finally push the league to a post-Snyder world, for this moment Dan Snyder is still one of them.

ESPN senior writer Tisha Thompson and researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this report.

Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr. are senior writers for ESPN. Reach them at Seth.Wickersham@espn.com and Don.VanNatta@espn.com. On Twitter, in finding them at @sethwickersham and @DVNJr.