Roger Goodell added to bad PR surrounding the NFL with comments on Daniel Snyder’s punishment | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Al Toby discuss the many legal battles facing the National Football League. The Washington Football Team investigation, the relocation of the Rams and Raiders, the infighting between owners are just a few of the big problems facing the league. And why does Washington owner Daniel Snyder continue to get protection? Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
CHARLES ROBINSON: Roger Goodell has come out and said that he felt like Dan Snyder was punished appropriately. He said, we're not releasing things because we promised confidentiality to people who, from what he's suggesting, came forward and cooperated. And those are the people we are protecting. The interesting wrinkle in all this-- and that's-- by the way, that's just Roger saying the same thing he's been saying, the league's been saying since this whole thing started. We're not giving anything out there. Like, you're not getting anything.
That's why I think what Wickersham reported today about all the owners fighting in this meeting is actually the bigger bomb to come out of this meeting. Because the NFL wants people focusing on the Washington Football investigation more than what happened in that room because the NFL knows, we're not giving anybody anything. And for Congress to come in and essentially subpoena us and start taking stuff is a very, very winnable battle, the NFL believes. Like, it feels like it has the edge when it comes to congressional meddling in a private organization such as a football team.
But Mark Davis comes out-- the Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis comes out-- and he says he believes that they should present, at least to him, a report with all the findings and the Washington Football Team investigation, which doesn't exist, which the league has said repeatedly does not exist. I think it's interesting that Davis broke ranks. You only do that when you feel like you're damaged, clearly, by everything that happened, which he says, I had a head coach.
AL TOBY: He lost his head coach. He lost his $100 million coach.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Lost my head coach. And then he said, you know, the fact that they came to him right before these emails came out and put the emails in his hands right before they were leaked publicly, they became public knowledge clearly really pissed him off. I think the Washington Football investigation is clearly important. I want to see all of it come out, 100%. There's no question in my mind.
I just think that people have to understand now, the league is-- there are so many battles going on on so many fronts for the league right now. This isn't-- like, you want to talk about a multi-front war? They're dealing with relocation lawsuits in St. Louis, Oakland, OK? Now they have owners in-fighting. Now they have this Washington Football Team investigation that's out there.
Now they have Congress that's trying to poke around. Whether that'll be successful or not, that's not entertaining. You know, you have race norming in the concussion lawsuit, which is probably one of the worst things that's ever happened in the history of the NFL. Like, concussions might be the worst thing, and then the next thing that is the second-worst thing is you took concussed players and then used a race norming equation in order to pay out settlements.
I don't even-- at this point, like, from a PR standpoint, this is bordering on, like, the Ray Rice era. This is bordering on, like, just-- where you're starting to look at the NFL and go there's nothing but bad PR surrounding this league right now. And--
AL TOBY: Which is why this season, the competition-- it's being so tight, all these overtime games, the influx of gambling. They can't wait for Sunday to come around--
CHARLES ROBINSON: Right, yeah.
AL TOBY: Because then we just all hit Pause, and then we go to the action of what's going on.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, that's been the savior, that every Sunday there have been-- Sundays, the prime time games have been, for the most part, really good, and the product is so great. But then there's all this other stuff going on outside of the product where you just have to wonder, at some point, especially if the owners start fighting with each other, how much of this gets turned on Goodell, you know? Because at some point, Jerry Jones, who's gone after Goodell in the past, is going to go, you're losing control here. Like, you have lost control of the narrative. You've lost control of how-- you know, what was happening with the Rams situation, the relocation. You lost control of the narrative with the Washington Football Team.
And it's never good that Goodell had to tell the room in this private owners meeting that we did not leak those emails. Like, he had to sit there and tell the other owners, we're not behind this. That is about as bad as it gets when your $40-million-a-year commissioner has to look at all his bosses and say, wasn't me, like, wasn't me. It was somebody else.
AL TOBY: The biggest question I always have in all of this, since Washington is the ground zero of all this, is, like, why does Daniel Snyder cut have this godfather-like protection for all his malfeasance? And until we get an answer out of this, all these questions are just going to keep building and building, and they're not going away.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, I mean, if you want to talk about troublesome owners, like, I-- he's not at the top of the list. He's pretty close, historically. I mean, Al Davis, obviously, if you want to talk about doing battle with the league and, you know, infighting and attacking the commissioner, probably takes the cake. But in terms of just sheer problems that he's caused from this Washington Football Team investigation, the multitude of different things that have come out over the years regarding the franchise, the name change-- he's run it into the ground.
I mean, it's a-- every time the job opens, why would you really want to go there? Can you survive there? Do you want to deal with that owner? The whole Ron Rivera, you know, coming in and the swap out of the GM and everything, that was supposed to be the culture change.
And oh, by the way, you have the DEA raiding your facility because your head of medicine is embroiled in some DEA investigation-- completely forgot that part of what's going-- and most everybody's forgotten that at this point. Remember when everyone was like, oh my god, the DEA is raiding the town home of Washington's head of medicine and they just served subpoena on the practice facility and are now in the team facility, you know, seizing things? Like, it's-- for that to get knocked off so quickly and forgotten about is really--
AL TOBY: You know, ballers and "Playmakers," for our older listeners, it's real.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah.
AL TOBY: I remember Warren Sapp railed against how "Playmakers" was just such a fictional show. This could never happen in the NFL. We're watching it unfold almost every week.