The Washington Football Team (nee Redskins) of Ashburn, Va. and Landover, Md. are no longer. They are now the Washington Commanders.

Frankly, it’s been a while since I feigned interest for this blog or otherwise. It’s pretty irrelevant what they are now Commanders , because we can all expect…

…another 20-30 years of Dan Snyder

It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.

“Tripper” Harrison

It’s hard to root for a franchise whose owner gets rewarded continuously for failing on and off the field. There is nothing to suggest that he is going to sell the team in his lifetime and he’s only 57 years old.

Snyder spent years proclaiming he would never change the team name. Then, as soon as sponsors expressed concern, he folded in weeks. He finally did the right thing, but for the wrong reason. As bad as Snyder is a football team owner, he’s probably an even worse person.

MATT TERL: The Washington Football Team Awaits a New Name, But the Mediocrity Remains – CityPaper
The former official team blogger summarizes the Snyder era.

DAVE McKENNA: The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder – CityPaper
Th classic take-down that Snyder sued over.

The Synder franchise is alleged to have done terrible things! Even if you ignored all of that remember that they got rattled when an opponent brought heated benches in for a game!

There are better ways to spend a Sunday

The NFL schedule is now 17 games a season. At about 3 hours a game, watching just the games accounts for over 2 days of a year. Fall weather in the D.C. area is pretty good, plenty of things to do that don’t involve watching another poorly constructed Snyder team on FOX’s C-team of broadcasters.

Unfortunately, some Virginia politicians want to help Snyder

Pair of Va. bills seek to finance football stadium, lure Washington Football Team – WTOP
Does anybody doing business with Snyder come out better than they went in?

NFL stadiums are white elephants over 350 days a year. Alexandria said no to Jack Kent Cooke Stadium at Potomac Yard 30+ years ago.

Loudoun and Prince William would be wise to do the same.

The name

It’s not a slur, so that’s good. The name is plural too, so that’s better than Brigade or Armada.

Commanders is boring and not in an ol’ timely boring way like “Nationals.” At least Wizards has alliteration. There is nothing about Commanders that says “greater Washington D.C. area” military presence notwithstanding. That’s probably the most charitable way to look at it, but…

Hogs or some variation of that, was right there.

The uniforms

THE OLD

Like most uniform designs, they “fixed” what wasn’t broken. The previous jerseys were basically the same since 1978. If you think of the glory years of the Joe Gibbs era, white over burgundy comes to mind.

The “burgundy” jerseys shifted to the home jersey several times this century. Paired with the throwback “gold” and black shoes, they looked really sharp. Those britches were the one successful aspect of the Bruce Allen era, so in true Snyder franchise fashion, they dropped them a few years ago. Social media has shown WFT going monochrome more often.

THE NEW

  • Back to the present, it’s a bad look – it looks like something a small market AFC team would have come up with in the late 1990s. Or the University of Minnesota.
  • I’m generally “block numbers or nothing” for the digits don’t work for me.
  • The all black for black sake uniforms are a trend from 20 years ago. Maybe they could put NO FEAR or XTREME on their somewhere too.
  • The white uniforms look like a bad Arizona Cardinals concept.
  • Origami W! The one they nominally used as the logo the past two seasons was better.
  • Say what you will for the quality of the NFC East, but at least 75% of the team looked like old-line franchises until now. Then again, the NFC East hasn’t been special since Pat Summerall was advising us that up next was “60 Minutes, followed by Murder, She Wrote. Except on the West Coast…

Try not to laugh:

Okay, I’ve put more time into this than I need to. Maybe I’ll write something again if Snyder stops owning the team.

Leave a Reply