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Dan Snyder’s profane joy in Redskins win based on salary cap penalties

After the Washington Redskins beat the New York Giants, 17-16 in an exciting Monday Night Football game, Redskins owner Dan Snyder became even more excited.

Via the New York Post's Mike Vaccaro:

Well, you didn't expect Dan Snyder, the owner of the Redskins, to embrace prosperity with the humility of a Mara or a Tisch, did you? So after years of running a beloved civic trust into the ground, after years of losing, of abject failure, Danny Boy had himself a moment in the sun last night. Snyder, in front of several media witnesses, had this to say to a Redskins staffer:

"I hate those mother[bleepers]," Snyder said gleefully.

Actually, Giants president and CEO John Mara may be behind Snyder's invective, and Mara wasn't acting with humility when he said what he said about the $36 million in salary cap penalties the Redskins were hit with in March. When asked about the cap hits, which Snyder's team was given in response to alleged contract irregularities during the uncapped season of 2011, Mara (who is also the head of the NFL's Management Council, the governing body that doled out the penalties in the first place), had this to say:

"I thought the penalties imposed were proper. What they did was in violation of the spirit of the salary cap. They attempted to take advantage of a one-year loophole, and quite frankly, I think they're lucky they didn't lose draft picks."

We can argue whether the penalties handed to Snyder's Redskins and Jerry Jones' Dallas Cowboys (who were docked $10 million over two years) were fair, but it was pretty clear that Mara appeared to have a fairly serious conflict of interest. All of a sudden, two of the Giants' division rivals are so out of whack that their salary caps need to be affected to that extent? And draft picks should have been taken as well?

Gosh. We suppose there's a new sheriff in town.

According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, the Redskins used Mara's quotes as bulletin board material leading up to Monday night's game. Redskins officials are still convinced that Mara used the ploy to try and wrest enough draft picks away from them to make the deal with the St. Louis Rams that allowed them to move up to second place in the 2012 Draft and select Robert Griffin III impossible. Of course, that didn't happen -- Washington traded its 2012 first-round pick, its 2012 second-round pick, and its first-round picks in 2013 and 2014, for the right to select Griffin. At this point, that deal may turn out to be a bargain.

And into the future, John Mara's offseason "discipline" will likely take a rivalry that has been at fever pitch for decades and stoke the flames even higher.

"I could give two [bleeps] what Daniel Snyder has to say," Giants center Chris Snee told Bart Hubbuch of The New York Post. "I've heard lots of things about people hating him too. Including people that work for him."

That's probably a valid point, too.