The Washington Redskins are almost certainly going to be called a new name by the time the 2020 season kicks off. JP Finley of NBC Sports Washington wrote on Sunday that what once seemed like an impossibility just a few months ago, now seems like it’s a certainty.
Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has long said that he will never change the team name, but earlier this week, he announced a review of the name. As several analysts have said, it seems unlikely the team could go into a review and decide the name was perfectly fine.
Finley went one step further than “unlikely,” saying the Redskins will never play another game. He added there will be a team playing in FedEx field and representing the city of Washington, D.C., but the Redskins, as a brand, is over.
The analyst said he’s had several private conversations with people around the team and the NFL. One thing was reportedly repeated to him over and over. The name change is “done.”
Just how fast the change is coming is still up for debate. Finley said the timeline is still murky. Some of that is because of the logistics of changing the name so soon before the season is set to kick off. Rumors have popped up that the team does want to make sure any change to the team name is done before the 2020 season starts. That means there’s going to be plenty of logo and apparel changes needed so that merchandise can be sold at the stadium and in online stores.
The analyst said one of the reasons a name change for the Redskins seems so inevitable is because while the team announced a review on July 3, conversations inside the front office have been going on much longer than that.
Finley said one source told him the conversations started not long after the George Floyd killing and the protests that followed. The conversations reportedly really heated up in the first week of June. Despite the heat of those talks, there is one thing that is still unclear: what the new team name will be, when all is said and done.
Finley said that while Redtails and Warriors are the current public favorites, that doesn’t mean either will be what the Redskins arrive on. The organization is said to want to talk with numerous people before it makes a decision.
The analyst said he wanted to be clear, while conversations took place early last month, it was indeed public pressure from Nike and FedEx that accelerated the new talks. Now, Finley said, “the unthinkable now seems inevitable.”
The Washington Redskins will never take the field again.
