Roger Goodell addresses Washington Football Team investigation, says Daniel Snyder has ‘been held accountable’

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell held a press conference Tuesday evening from the owners meetings in New York. Naturally, he was peppered with a number of questions surrounding the league, but the investigation into the Washington Football Team’s workplace took top billing. That questioning came as former employees hand-delivered a letter to the five owners on the NFL‘s Social Justice Working Group in an attempt to make the findings of the league’s investigation into the team public. The letter was signed by 12 former employees and said, in part, that the NFL should not “sweep the results of the investigation under the rug.” 

Of course, over a year ago, 15 former team employees alleged sexual harassment in the organization and led to a full investigation by the league, which resulted in the Washington Football Team being fined $10 million for its “highly unprofessional” environment. Meanwhile, Daniel Snyder stepped down from running the day-to-day operations of the team. 

While the league did conduct an investigation, only a summary was released instead of a full-scale report, which was done for various other NFL investigations (ex. Deflategate). 

“We are calling on you to demand that the NFL make the findings public,” the letter reads. “We are calling you to do the right thing.”

The reason why the investigation was not unveiled in a more in-depth way other than a summary, according to Goodell, is because some Washington Football Team employees were guaranteed anonymity in cooperating with the Wilkinson investigation, and protecting that anonymity is why the report won’t go public. 

When asked if Snyder had been held accountable for the findings of the investigation, Goodell said, “I do think he’s been held accountable. I think the organization has been held accountable. I think we gave an unprecedented fine. Dan Snyder has not been involved with the organization for now almost four months. We are obviously focused more on making sure that policies — some that they put into place prior to this investigation — coming out of it were put into place and that they will be maintained and that we can ensure that that will happen in this organization.”

The NFL has said it looks forward to communicating with the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee after it requested the league to turn over documents and findings related to the investigation.