Dan Snyder owned the Washington Commanders for 24 seasons, and stories about how he ran the team keep surfacing. The latest comes from former NFL interim head coach Terry Robiskie, who says Snyder tried to keep a Super Bowl winner from collecting a $300K incentive.
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Washington was going to play Arizona, Larry Centers’ old team, to close out their 2000 season. Centers approached Robiskie and explained that his salary hadn’t earned him much that year. He did have a shot at a $300,000 bonus, but only if he caught six passes in that game.
“He said, ‘Coach, man, I gotta get these six catches for this $300,000, man. I’ll give you a thousand,’” Robiskie said on The Family Business Podcast with Norv and Stephanie Turner. “I said, ‘Okay, good. Give me a thousand!’ But right then, that guy wanted to know, ‘Coach, do you really care about me?’ You know what I mean? And I know that I got a little note from the owner of that team saying, ‘Don’t let that guy get them six catches.’”
“I threw him seven balls in the first quarter. I made sure he got them.
“I never got my thousand dollars from him. I gotta get my thousand!,” Robiskie joked. “But I made sure he had his incentive. And I told the owner, ‘If you don’t want him to make that incentive, don’t put it in his contract, because I’m the wrong guy.’”
Per Robiskie, former head coach Norv Turner would always throw him six, seven, or eight passes in a game. And per the official record, Centers went home a happy man after that game, as he caught eight passes against the Cardinals. He even led pass-catchers in that game with his eight catches.
Previously that year, the Cardinals (who won only three games that season) defeated them. But Washington had the last laugh, who humbled Arizona with a 20-3 victory.
Across 1999 and 2000, Centers played 31 games and caught 150 passes for 1,144 yards and 6 touchdowns with Washington. His 2000 season was the highlight of his stay at Washington, recording 81 catches for 600 yards.
Centers moved on to Buffalo in 2001 and made his third Pro Bowl. He stayed another year with the Bills, joined the Patriots in 2003, and retired before the 2004 season.
Over 14 seasons as a fullback with Phoenix/Arizona, Washington, Buffalo, and New England, he piled up 827 catches for 6,797 yards and 28 touchdowns. He also ran for 2,188 yards and 14 scores, for a total of 8,985 yards from scrimmage and 42 total touchdowns.
With New England, Centers won a Super Bowl.
As for the owner in this story, Dan Snyder bought the Redskins and their stadium in May 1999 for $800 million, the most expensive sports deal at the time. He owned the team for more than two decades. Snyder put the franchise up for sale in late 2022, and in 2023 he sold it to a group led by Josh Harris for $6.05 billion.
Robiskie’s story shows where his loyalty lay. With the owner’s note on one side and Centers asking for help on the other, he backed his player and got him the catches.