Washington Football Team Becomes the Commanders, Keeping Burgundy and Gold

The football team in Washington has settled on a permanent identity: the Commanders. The franchise announced the new name Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show, ending a two-season stretch in which it played under the placeholder Washington Football Team.

Team owner Dan Snyder framed the choice as a tribute to the club's home base. "As an organization, we are excited to rally and rise together as one under our new identity while paying homage to our local roots and what it means to represent the nation's capital," he said.

The color scheme will not change. Snyder said the team will continue to "honor and represent the Burgundy and Gold while forging a pathway to a new era in Washington."

The announcement carried little suspense, because the name had already leaked in two ways. On Monday, Joe Theismann, who quarterbacked Washington to a Super Bowl XVII victory over the Dolphins in 1983, appeared to reveal it during an interview on CBS Sports Radio.

"I think the Commanders is a name that is hopefully gonna be one that people will talk about going forward," Theismann said. He went on to suggest where the name came from, pointing to the concentration of leaders in the capital. "Commanders is basically Washington, D.C. A lot of Commanders in Washington, D.C., the Pentagon and a lot of different branches of the service. So to me that's certainly the way I'm looking at it, as positions of leadership when it comes to the new name."

A day later, on Tuesday, a camera aboard NBC Washington's Chopper 4 zoomed in on a banner inside FedEx Field. It displayed the word "Commanders" in gold letters against a maroon background, matching the team's longtime colors.

The club, a division rival of the Giants in the NFC East, dropped its previous name in July of 2020 because it was racially insensitive. It has gone by Washington Football Team since then.

Snyder's earlier stance on renaming the team stands in contrast to the outcome. In a 2003 interview with USA Today, he said, "We will never change the name of the team." Pressed on the point, he added: "We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER — you can use caps."