I have lived in the DC area for well over a decade now and I've borne witness to Skins owner Dan Snyder doing some pretty evil shit: suing season ticket holders, getting park rangers fired, banning signs, deliberately hiring a critical reporter away from the Washington Post just to fire him, emasculating Jim Zorn, sending out an army of personal Sean Spicers to defend the team nickname, and filing baseless lawsuits just to drain the coffers of people he doesn't like. Petty shitheadedness is Standard Operating Procedure over at team headquarters in Ashburn, VA, but what happened yesterday was somehow, against all odds, jaw-dropping for an organization that lives to fuck up.

If you follow the NFL, you already know the background here: Two years ago, the team hired former Niners and Seahawks exec Scot McCloughan as General Manager. McCloughan was known as a heavy drinker in his two previous jobs, but he was a respected talent evaluator, and he was supposedly given total control over the roster, which was virtually unheard of during Snyder's first two decades operating the team. Since McCloughan's arrival, the team has gone 17-14-1, with one division title. That doesn't sound particularly impressive, but these are the Skins, so that represents a quantum leap in achievement around these parts. As a result, McCloughan became the only front office exec in Washington that fans trusted. This team seemed to be, at long last, getting things right. As someone who loathes the organization, I can't tell you how discouraging it was to watch them be mildly competent.

That all collapsed this offseason, because two years is jussssst about the maximum amount of time that the Skins can go without shooting themselves in the dick. In addition to getting into a bitter and needless contract dispute with quarterback Kirk Cousins (who just personally appealed to Dan Snyder for a trade and was rebuffed), the team began to drift away from McCloughan. He was nowhere to be found at the NFL scouting combine (the team attributed the absence to the death of his grandmother, who had passed away three weeks earlier), and was effectively ghosted from headquarters during the lead-up to free agency. Former tight end Chris Cooley put out a rumor that McCloughan was drinking heavily again, and the Skins did nothing to deny it. Then yesterday, on the opening day of free agency, they fired him. And here is where it gets really gross:

An official with direct knowledge of the situation attributed the decision to McCloughan's ongoing problems with alcohol… "He's had multiple relapses due to alcohol," said the official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on personnel matters. "He showed up in the locker room drunk on multiple occasions. . . . This has been a disaster for 18 months."

Eighteen months. Eighteen fucking months. You're telling me that the Skins hired an alcoholic and let him run rampant for 3/4ths of his tenure before suddenly coming to their senses at the worst possible time? Bullshit. BULL. SHIT. Someone please make a neon sign that says BULLSHIT and post it outside Snyder's bedroom window. Please note that the Skins fired McCloughan with cause, which means they don't want to pay him, and please note that the Post report above is attributed to four reporters. One of whom—Mike Jones—pretty much contradicted his own article's source on Twitter last night:

That tweet was retweeted by McCloughan's wife. As you can see, not everyone, Post employees included, was pleased that the paper gave the anonymous official in this piece carte blanche to dump all over McCloughan. Also, one of the bylines on that piece belongs to John Woodrow Cox, who contributed to this extremely favorable report on the team's racist nickname a year ago. Draw your own conclusions.

It gets worse, by the way. Here's another report on McCloughan from the local CBS affiliate, which, like the Post report, also includes scuttlebutt from a bravely anonymous source:

"[Team president] Bruce [Allen] and [head coach] Jay [Gruden] run the Redskins. Bruce and Jay's record for the team the last two years is them," the source told 106.7 The Fan. "The facade of the GM has been exposed on the outside now…But everyone on the inside and many in the NFL always knew."

Oh wow, turns out the people still in charge were the actual masterminds of the team's resurgence! FANCY THAT. That above quote has already been refuted by Jason La Canfora and other NFL access merchants who, under normal circumstances, would never call out the same people who feed them scoops:

Even if you buy that the Skins did all they could to help McCloughan, including sending him to rehab (the Post points out that McCloughan took no noticeable absences with the team prior to this spring), they still handled this with a shocking (and possibly illegal) disregard for the welfare of a man they already KNEW to be ill. As plenty of people have already pointed out, McCloughan was far from the only person in Ashburn who liked to booze:

But do you know what? Nothing I'm saying here matters. It's safe to assume that you should never trust this team to act in good faith, but a lot of people will. A lot of people will open up the paper this morning, read those anonymous quotes, and spend the rest of their lives assuming that McCloughan was an incorrigible drunk who deserved what he got. The damage to his professional reputation, and his life, will be permanent. It doesn't matter how much I, or anyone else, tries to debunk those claims. It doesn't matter if McCloughan sues the team and wins, as he ought to. The Skins will carry on making money while sucking, as always. It's yet another perfect little example of how fake news can become holy writ that benefits the powerful, and it's going to ruin a man who may not deserve it.

Here's what I think: I think Bruce Allen, who runs the team through a fun mix of cronyism and nepotism, didn't like that McCloughan had become the face of the team's success, and I think, with Snyder's blessing, he screwed McCloughan over. Nakedly. Blatantly. I think the whole thing is gross. I think it's a whole new dimension of gross for a team that lives to explore such dimensions. I'm surprised that I'm so surprised they were capable of this, frankly. I should have known. I should have known that a football lifer like McCloughan was doomed the second he set foot in that viper pit. I should have known that Snyder would stand by and watch one of his own employees get hung out to dry. And I should have known that this team will always find a way to be the absolute fucking worst.

Drew Magary *is a GQ correspondent and author, most recently of *The Hike.

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