Washington Commanders

• 1. Introduction

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  The Washington Commanders have been playing professional football since 1932, making them one of the oldest franchises in American professional sports. But the path from their founding in Boston to their current identity in the Washington metropolitan area winds through championship glory, deliberate controversy, racial segregation, and a name change that took decades of pressure to achieve. How did a franchise that won three Super Bowls in a single decade fall into 30 years of futility? Why did the federal government threaten civil rights action against a professional football team? And what does it mean for a franchise to reinvent itself after nearly a century under the same name? The answers lie in a story that touches American history at nearly every turn.

• 2. Boston Beginnings

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  On the 9th of July 1932, the city of Boston received an NFL franchise under the ownership of businessman George Preston Marshall. The team initially shared Braves Field with the Boston Braves baseball team, borrowing even the name. By 1933, both the name and the home stadium had changed, as the team rebranded as the Redskins and moved to Fenway Park. Joe F. Carr, a figure in the league's administration, captured the difficulty Marshall faced in Boston when he wrote that New England's football culture was rooted entirely in college and prep school tradition, viewing professional football as a kind of commercial pollution of the sport. Despite finishing their first championship game appearance in Boston, a loss to the Green Bay Packers by 21-6 in 1936, Marshall concluded that his home city showed no real interest in the team. That conviction drove the move to Washington, D.C., in 1937, where they shared Griffith Stadium with the Washington Senators baseball team and immediately beat the New York Giants in their first regular-season game at their new home.

• 3. Championship Eras

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  Sammy Baugh defined the franchise's first golden age. In 1937, the Redskins won their first championship by defeating the Chicago Bears, and in 1942, they did it again by a score of 14-6. Baugh's individual brilliance peaked in 1943 when he led the NFL simultaneously in passing, punting, and interceptions in a single season. The 1945 season produced one of football's most debated plays: Baugh, dropping back to pass from his own five-yard line, threw to an open receiver whose ball struck the goal post and bounced incomplete into the end zone, which under the rules of the time was ruled a safety, giving the Cleveland Rams a 2-0 lead in a game Washington ultimately lost 15-14. Marshall was so incensed by the ruling that he drove a rule change after the season declaring that any forward pass striking the goalpost would be ruled incomplete, a rule later called the Baugh/Marshall Rule. The second championship era arrived under head coach Joe Gibbs between 1982 and 1991, producing three Super Bowl victories: XVII over the Miami Dolphins 27-17, XXII over the Denver Broncos 42-10, and XXVI over the Buffalo Bills 37-24. Super Bowl XXII featured Doug Williams, who threw four touchdowns in the second quarter to become the first Black quarterback to lead his team to a championship, and rookie running back Timmy Smith, who ran for a then Super Bowl-record 204 yards.

• 4. Integration Under Pressure

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  On the 24th of March 1961, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall warned Marshall to hire Black players or face federal intervention, a moment described as the first time in history that the federal government had attempted to desegregate a professional sports team. The threat carried legal weight because the Redskins were moving into D.C. Stadium, a federally owned facility managed by the Department of the Interior. Washington became the last professional American football franchise to integrate, doing so in 1962. In the 1962 NFL draft, the team selected Ernie Davis of Syracuse with the first overall pick. Davis was the first Black player to win the Heisman Trophy and the first to be taken at the top of an NFL draft. In December 1961, Marshall traded Davis's rights to the Cleveland Browns for running back Bobby Mitchell and a first-round pick. The trade had tragic dimensions: Davis had leukemia and died before ever playing a professional game. Mitchell converted to wide receiver in Washington and led the league with 11 touchdowns in 1962, catching 72 passes and earning a Pro Bowl selection. Over the following years he was joined by receiver Charley Taylor, running back Larry Brown, safety Brig Owens, and guard John Nisby.

• 5. The Redskins Name Dispute

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  The team carried the name Redskins from 1933 to 2020, and opposition to that branding built over decades before culminating in the retirement of the name. The National Congress of American Indians was among the groups that called the name a racial slur and pressed for change. In 2013, owner Daniel Snyder cited a 2004 Annenberg Public Policy Center poll showing 90% of Native Americans were not offended, a finding that a Washington Post poll in 2016 broadly replicated. But a 2020 study by social scientists from the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley found that 49% of Native Americans considered the name offensive, with the level rising to 67% among those more actively involved in Native American culture. The decisive pressure came in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed, when a letter signed by 87 shareholders and investors urged major sponsors Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo to cut ties with the team unless it changed its name. Retail companies began pulling Redskins merchandise from stores, and the team announced in July 2020 that it would retire the name and branding, playing two seasons as the Washington Football Team before rebranding as the Commanders in 2022. The controversy did not end there. The Wetzel family, whose ancestor Blackie Wetzel is credited with designing the original logo depicting a Native American chief based on John Two Guns White Calf, the last Blackfeet chief, stated they wished to regain rights to the logo to raise awareness of social issues on reservations.

• 6. Ownership and Decline

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  Jack Kent Cooke, a Canadian-American businessman who had owned minority shares since 1960, became the Commanders' sole owner in 1985 after buying out Edward Bennett Williams for around $9 million. He died on the 6th of April 1997, of congestive heart failure at age 84, leaving the team to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation with instructions to sell. On the 25th of May 1999, the franchise was sold to local businessman Daniel Snyder for $800 million. Snyder's tenure brought a string of head coaches and fitful seasons. From the time Gibbs retired in 1993 through 2024, the team won only five playoff games. In July 2021, lawyer Beth Wilkinson concluded a year-long independent investigation into the team's workplace culture and found that sexual harassment, bullying, and intimidation were common throughout the organization. The NFL fined the team $10 million, and Snyder stepped away from day-to-day operations. A U.S. House Oversight Committee report later accused Snyder of withholding security deposits from season ticket holders. By November 2022, mounting pressure from fellow owners pushed Snyder to engage BofA Securities to explore a sale. In May 2023, he agreed to sell the team to a group led by Josh Harris, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, for $6.05 billion, the highest price ever paid for a sports team at the time, a deal approved by the NFL on the 20th of July 2023.

• 7. Revival Under Harris

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  By 2024, the Harris ownership group had invested $75 million in upgrading Northwest Stadium, covering improvements to food options, suites, and the sound system. The broader rebuild of the roster moved quickly: general manager Adam Peters signed around 30 free agents and selected Jayden Daniels, the 2023 Heisman Trophy winner, second overall in the 2024 NFL draft. Daniels was named the 2024 Offensive Rookie of the Year, and the Commanders finished the season by winning a playoff game for the first time since 2005 and reaching the NFC Championship Game for the first time since 1991. Off the field, the franchise announced in April 2025 a $3.8 billion New Stadium at the RFK Campus, targeted to open in 2030, on the site of the old RFK Stadium where cornerback Darrell Green played the first of his 295 regular-season games for the team starting in 1983.