NFL figures in the news this week:
Daniel Snyder. I’m ignoring the fighting between Democrats and Republicans over the issue of whether Snyder should be investigated by the federal government and/or kicked out of the league. I’ll focus on two issues prompted by the 79-page report of the House Oversight Committee:
- Snyder saying, per former team president Bruce Allen, that he was going to have commissioner Roger Goodell shadowed to try to find out something damaging to use against Goodell. Allen said Snyder told him: “I’m going to follow — I’m going to have him followed, follow the Commissioner. You know, I’m going to find something out about him.” This is the top executive of Snyder’s team, testifying before Congress that he was going to have Goodell tailed to see if he could learn something to hold over Goodell’s head. This is confirmation of what Don Van Natta, Tisha Thompson and Seth Wickersham reported this fall about NFL sources claiming Snyder was trying to dig up dirt on big people in the league. Could Allen be lying? If he is, he risks a perjury charge and prison time for lying to a House committee.
- The Oversight Committee reporting that, in his video testimony, Snyder said some version of “I don’t recall” more than 100 times. Included were such incredulous memory lapses as—though he did admit to using private investigators—he was “unaware” of who they approached or tailed and did not remember talking to his lawyers about who he wanted to have investigated or tailed. As former lawyer and Pro Football Talk Live host Mike Florio said on his TV show Friday: “‘I don’t recall’ is the ultimate perjury safe-harbor.” It is simply not believable to read Snyder being asked if private investigators were sent to the home of Allen and answering, “I’m not sure. I’m unaware.”
The league deserves its share of criticism, again, for not ordering the original report on the workplace environment of the Washington franchise to be written and released. After reports on the Miami bullying scandal, Ray Rice, and the Patriots’ Deflategate saga were written and made public, it’s a slap in the face of public trust to say an incredibly serious investigation into the seedy workplace culture of one of its 32 franchises is not worth a report—even if the names in the report all have to be redacted.
The larger point is this: How can the other 31 owners in the league witness this, and how can Goodell watch it, and think there is any way Daniel Snyder should continue to be an equal partner in the NFL? Snyder’s got to go, and he’s got to go yesterday.
Von Miller. “Very unfortunate situation for Von, and for our team,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. Very unfortunate. The Bills signed Miller for huge money ($20 million in cash this year) in the off-season for his play and his leadership, both of which had been excellent until NFL Week 12 at Detroit, when he suffered a knee injury. Nine days later, in exploratory surgery, a torn ACL was discovered. So Miller, who will be 34 in March, will need to rehab darned fast to be an impact player for the Bills next season. The Bills got him to be great in the biggest games. As a Ram in the Super Bowl, in the last 18 minutes, Miller stopped two Cincinnati drives with sacks, and the Rams rebounded to win. Against Kansas City in October, with Patrick Mahomes driving, Miller sacked him for a nine-yard loss on a third down, forcing a punt—and Buffalo took the ball and scored the go-ahead TD. In the fourth quarter, his second sack of Mahomes led to another punt—and Buffalo followed with the winning TD drive.
What Buffalo will miss is a great player playing great at the biggest moments, and it could be a major factor in who gets out of the AFC this winter. Miller told Pat McAfee: “I won’t let myself go down that depressing road, get into a ball of self-pity.” Good for him. The Bills have to be sure they don’t go down that road without him.
Andrew Luck. Seth Wickersham’s opus on Luck—why he quit, what he’s doing now—answered a thousand questions we’ve all had on Luck. What we learned:
- He didn’t love football the way NFL diehards like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning did. He chuckled when he told Wickersham about being a quarterback, “Well, shoot. I don’t think I had a choice.” His dad, Oliver, was a quarterback, and Andrew was a quarterback through his adolescence and into college, and he was a great one, so it was pre-ordained—Andrew Luck would be a quarterback. The story makes you think he liked being a quarterback but didn’t pine for it. “What I didn’t allow myself to explore enough was how much I loved football.” He called his post-college life “a story that felt written.”
- Luck got tired of feeling hurt all the time. Tom Brady has talked about being sore all the time when he was 25, but if that was the cost of having his dream job, so be it. That led him to the TB12 stuff. But Luck, as Wickersham makes clear, didn’t want that life of always being in in chronic pain. Perhaps as importantly, Luck didn’t like the person he was when he was in that kind of pain.
- He might be a football coach one day, but he likely won’t come back to play. Frank Reich, the former Colts coach, sent him a note earlier this year after hearing the song “Message In A Bottle” by the Police. Reich texted Luck, “Sending out an SOS.” Wickersham said Luck texted back a firm no. And Luck said: “There are things I miss. But there are things that, one, I’m not willing to give up about my life now, and two, that I don’t want to put myself through again.”
- As a grad student at Stanford now, with a family, Luck is leading the life he wants. The last scene of the story, Luck riding away from Wickersham on his bike on the Stanford campus, was so fitting. Luck sees himself as a grad-school student and husband and parent looking for the life he might have begun to live nine years ago had he never been a great NFL quarterback. And he’s pretty okay with that.
What I was left with after reading and re-reading the story: Luck doesn’t have all the answers about why he quit, about why he left the Colts high and dry two weeks before the 2019 season, and about why his quarterback body continually betrayed him. He does know he’s doing what he wants to do now.
Jon Robinson. For owner Amy Adams Strunk to fire her general manager, a man who built the team on its way to a third straight division title, with five weeks left in the NFL regular season is certainly her right. But what purpose does it serve, other than to embarrass him? Obviously, Robinson has had some bad personnel calls recently (the disastrous 2020 first-round pick of tackle Isaiah Wilson, the trade for a broken-down Julio Jones and free-agent signing of a disinterested Vic Beasley in 2021, the trade of A.J. Brown last draft weekend), so dissatisfaction with him was probably to be expected. I’ll never understand why Robinson couldn’t figure out a way to keep one of the league’s top receivers, Brown, last April. But the timing of this firing came totally out of left field, even, apparently, to the head coach Robinson hired. “I was informed of the decision. This wasn’t a decision that included me,” Mike Vrabel said. So why is a GM who built the AFC top seed last year gone? Good question.
After three days of saying nothing other than a perfunctory statement, Strunk spoke to AP writer Teresa M. Walker. Although Walker said in the story that Strunk told her she couldn’t ignore the holes on the roster, the owner wasn’t more specific than that. “I want to be one of those elite teams that people are always scared of,” Strunk told Walker. “And eventually it’s up to me to make those kinds of decisions that get us there.” Say this for Strunk: She’s got a short memory. In a four-week span in midseason last year, the team Robinson constructed beat Buffalo, Kansas City and the Rams, soon-to-be Super Bowl champions, by a combined 39 points.
Turf the dog. After two cancer surgeries, the second of which forced the removal of Seattle wildlife manager Turf’s left foreleg, the lovable chocolate lab, a fixture at every Seahawk practice since 2013, died last week at 9-and-a-half. “It’s a shame Turf had to leave us, but like so many people in the organization said, what a great 10 years he had,” said Turf fan and NFL wide receiver Tyler Lockett. Even after being reduced to three legs, Turf flew across the practice fields to keep them clear of the birds that would come in off Lake Washington. “Don’t be sad that he’s gone,” Turf’s Twitter account posted. “Be happy that he lived the ultimate and fullest life.”
R.I.P @Turfthedog
2013-2022 💙 pic.twitter.com/v0JDztQGep
— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) December 9, 2022
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column
