Leaked emails in October 2021 from Jon Gruden are believed to have led to the eventual ouster of Daniel Snyder as owner of the Washington Commanders.

"He was free and clear that October -- he just had to wait out his suspension and let everything blow over," a source close to Snyder said. "A major miscalculation. Without the leaks, he might just have survived."

Many have speculated that Snyder was behind the leak with the motivation that it would shift negative attention away from him.

Gruden and Mark Davis blamed Roger Goodell and top executives within the NFL league office. Four owners told ESPN they believe Goodell was personally involved.

Meanwhile, some DeMaurice Smith bragged that he was responsible for leaking the racist email referring to him. The leaked email coincided with a union vote where Smith narrowly kept his job. A lawyer who frequently works with the league said the timing of the leak was "suspicious because clearly it appeared to anyone paying attention that someone was trying to help De. Who had the incentive for De to keep his job? The NFL."

No matter how the leaks were engineered, multiple sources draw a direct line from emails that trickled out over a few days in October 2021 to Snyder's crash and his imminent $6.05 billion sale of the Commanders. 

League officials told ESPN that regardless of any acrimony between Goodell and Gruden, the commissioner wouldn't have approved leaking the emails, despite their racist tone. "He still wouldn't do it," a league source said. In NFL circles, it's believed that if not for the leaks, those emails would have remained buried in what owners and executives commonly refer to as "Jeff Pash's black box."