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On March 24 in Orlando at the beginning of the NFL Owner’s Meeting, Robert Saleh told NFl Network reporter Steve Wyche: “Last year was a little loud. We welcome a little bit of quietness.”
Well quietness didn’t seem to follow.
On Tuesday’s edition of the “Around the NFL” podcast, reporter Colleen Wolfe said the following: “I have a little bit of a situation I’m working on right now, little bit of a lead. Usually my sparrows will sing like canaries and I asked them what is going on. I will say, from a very reliable source, at the NFL owner’s meeting, there was a very heated conversation between Woody (Johnson) and Robert Saleh to the point that is was a little bit awkward. What were they arguing about? At the party last night. I’m just saying. Who knows? It could have been about anything. Maybe they were disagreeing about how they like their steak cooked. Doubt that though.
“I would not say argument. A heated discussion. What were they discussing? A little awkward. A little awkward. A lively conversation they were having. What was that about?”
I did not witness what Wolfe is taking about. I was at the party, but was walking around talking to a lot of different people.
I did see Woody briefly while I was walking around. He was in a tight circle. In the circle, it seemed to be Woody, Saleh and team president Hymie Elhai. The team’s top PR guy might have been there also.
I kept walking, but what I saw looked like a small huddle with four people all facing each other. It looked like a small football huddle, the kind where if somebody walked over, it would be awkward to infiltrate it.
But then I didn’t see them again. I’m told they didn’t stay long and went out to dinner in Orlando.
What is Saleh’s relationship with Woody? I have no idea, but never forget that Christopher Johnson hired Saleh (and Joe Douglas). Woody was in Great Britain when both hirings took place.
Christopher is a lot more hands-off. He told me after hiring Saleh, he would take a “light touch” with his his GM and coach combo. In other words, be pretty hands-off and let them run the football operation.
Since Woody came back and took over the team again in 2021 when his Ambassadorship ended, he’s been a much more hands-on owner than Christopher.
So Saleh and Douglas were hired by a man with a way different ownership style than Woody, so how would you feel about being hired by a hands-off owner, and then have a much more hands-on one?
Would either have taken the job if they knew what was coming? Who knows, but they signed up for one thing and got another. Not sure how happy either man is about how drastically things have changed from what they originally signed up for.
I’m not going to act like I’m buddies with Joe Douglas, but observing him around the team a lot, I see a different Joe Douglas the last couple of years since the ownership change. He seems different to me. Just a personal observation.
As for Saleh, it’s harder for me to discern a change there, because while Christopher hired him in 2021, Woody came back shortly after the hiring, so I didn’t see him work for a couple of years for Christopher, so it’s hard to make a comparison. But it could not have thrilled Saleh when Woody said they might keep Zach Wilson, after the coach reportedly promised the kid they would trade him late last season.
Did this “very heated conversation” take place? I can’t confirm it one way or another, but I’m not going to discredit Wolfe, who has been at the NFL Network for a decade, and knows a lot of people around the league.
But what’s the old saying, “Where there is smoke there is fire.”
March 28, 2024
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