The Washington Football Team will go with an interim name for the 2020 season after scrapping its previous dictionary-defined slur nickname and logo.
New coach Ron Rivera joined NFL Network's Good Morning Football on Friday and explained that the decision to play this season without a team name was made after realizing the process would take time.
"We've had conversations. I've been involved in those conversations," he said. "What happened was we found the realization that this is about a 16- to 18-month process. This can't happen instantly. So we've really got to do our homework, we've got to be very thorough with what we're doing going forward. Because we want to get it right. We want this new name, this new nickname to be able to stand the test of time, stand for 100 years. We're going to be real busy with that. We've hired a firm that wants to be very diligent with their work, they want to be inclusive with their work. We're going to do this right."
Washington plans on keeping its burgundy and gold color scheme as it processes out what to call itself after it goes by Football Team for at least a year.
The team's jerseys are clean and frill-free, including helmets with gold numbers where the old mascot used to reside.
"The players have reacted very well (to the new uniforms)," Rivera said. "They think the look is very clean. We've kept the traditional colors. We're gonna be burgundy and gold, again because there's so much history with this football team, and we don't want to lose that as well. So we're going to keep the colors. But the players like how clean it looks and how those things are concerned. They also like the idea of having numbers on the side of their helmets, and the Alabama players seem to be pretty excited about that. So it's gonna be a cool thing as we go forward."
NFL Network's Tom Pelissero reported that the team's equipment staff removed the old logo from all 90 player lockers Friday morning.
Rivera also commented on The Washington Post report in which 15 women accused former Washington employees of sexual harassment.
"The unfortunate part about the story is that those women that were named unfortunately didn't feel empowered enough to step up and file these claims so that something could be done about it, and now they're coming out," he said. "Well, because they've come out now, we've had to make decisions and move forward. One of the things that Mr. Snyder has done is he's hired a law firm to come in, a very prominent one in the D.C. area, to come in and evaluate us and give us suggestions and direction on how we need to do things better.
"That's one of the things we've got to make sure we get straightened out is our culture; we've got to create a more inclusive culture again, a culture also that does not allow this, does not accept this. That's one of the things that's going to help us as a football team. As we repair and improve who we want to be and what we want to do, I think that's one of the things that we really have to get right."
