Jay Gruden apparently had to deal with draft picks being made from Daniel Snyder’s yacht.
Only the Washington Football Team can have an absolutely ridiculous story like this emerge.
In Nicki Jhabvala’s feature for The Washington Post on how Washington let top front office executive Kyle Smith essentially make a lateral move to join the Atlanta Falcons as vice president of player personnel, we are given an absurd anecdote by former head coach Jay Gruden involving persistently absent owner Daniel Snyder. You will not be ready for what you are about to read.
“Every year that I was there, we had a pretty good draft class, with a couple exceptions,” said Gruden. “[Smith] was really good about listening to the coaches because the coaches also did evaluations.
“When it came our time to pick, we’d always talk about the picks, where we’d like to go, what happens if [the player] is gone, and did all our scenarios. And then [owner Daniel Snyder] would come in off his yacht and make the pick.”
This is a microcosm of how Washington let Kyle Smith leave the organization
Smith had worked his way up the organization from intern to vice president in 11 seasons. At 36 years old, he was in prime position to be the team’s next general manager. Instead, Washington hired Martin Mayhew and Marty Hurney this offseason. Smith fell back to third man in charge in the front office. He now reports to a new boss Terry Fontenot with the Falcons in Atlanta.
The yacht pick in question was Washington taking Dwayne Haskins No. 15 overall out of The Ohio State University in the 2019 NFL Draft. His former college coach Urban Meyer said he was too raw to come out. Not even two years through his NFL career, Haskins washed out of the nation’s capital. If only Snyder’s yacht could save the guy who played high school ball at his kids’ school.
This is the type of perpetual nonsense Washington has to attempt to overcome on a regular basis.