Washington Should change NFL identity from Commanders to Red Tails

Until those associated with the Washington Football Team — Oh, wait. They aren’t that nickname anymore. To the delight of many Indigenous people, they also got rid of what they were called for 87 years.

Anyway, until the folks running that NFL franchise along the Potomac River change from their current name of Commanders to something more captivating (like the Red Tails, definitely the Red Tails, which I suggested three months ago in a Forbes.com piece when they were sold to the Harris group for $6.05 billion), they’ll remain what they are these days.

Insignficant.

Sometimes worse than that.

And it doesn’t count they spent Sunday in Atlanta at Mercedes-Benz Stadium ending a three-game losing streak with a 24-16 victory after the Falcons kept setting themselves on fire while looking for more gasoline along the way.

Magic Johnson praised his other team anyway.

You’ve heard of Earvin?

He’s the guy with the eternal smile.

He’s worth $620 million courtesy of becoming a basketball icon for the ages, an entrepreneur on steroids and a professional Magic Johnson. He’s the wearer of seven world championship rings (if you count his five while dribbling with the Los Angeles Lakers and the ones he earned as part of the ownership groups of the Los Angeles Dodgers in Major League Baseball and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks).

He’s also involved with this Harris group.

While others among the ownership team remained mostly silent this summer after Josh Harris took control of the Commanders over Dan Snyder — a bust of an owner despite his old team ranking eighth on the Forbes list of team valuations — Johnson spoke. He did so in code about the franchise playing in Virginia for the past 27 years instead of Washington D.C., where they were for nearly six decades, and where they belong now.

Then Johnson thought about “Commanders.”

Commanders?

“We’re going to spend this year understanding what we have in place, and then I’m sure that that’ll come up,” Johnson told reporters back then. “The Commanders, the name of the team, will come up eventually. But right now, we got enough work to do that will keep us busy.”

Uh, yeah.

Until the Commanders get good, they need a distraction.

They need “Red Tails,” which would honor the name of the Tuskegee Airmen, the legendary Black pilots who fought during World War II. That would help to counter nearly a century of the franchise using a nickname the bulk of those Indigenous folks thought was offensive.

This also was offensive to many: Watching Snyder’s regime spend its 25 seasons losing more during that stretch than any other NFL team.

Well, except for five.

Not only that, but Snyder damaged the team’s reputation when the NFL cops were among those finding him guilty of workplace misconduct, and he was forced out of the league after paying a $60 million fine.

The franchise remains a mess on the field.

If the Falcons aren’t the worst 3-3 team in the NFL, the Commanders should have their hands raised. Only the Denver Broncos rank lower than the Commanders in total defense, and they are slightly better than pitiful in total offense at No. 22 overall out of 32 teams in the league.

No wonder the Washington portion of the crowd Sunday inside and outside of Mercedes-Benz Stadium wasn’t the same.

I know.

Since I arrived in Atlanta as a sports journalist in 1985, I’ve covered most Falcons homes games, and several of them featured an avalance of Washington fans dominating the place when their NFL boys were in town.

This time, they were loud, but they normally are LOUD enough to make the Falcons feel as if they are the visitors in their own stadium.

Not Sunday.

Despite a flawed group of Dirty Birds, the overwhelming majority of the 69,911 folks in the place actually cheered for the Falcons.

There was this, too: Long after the 1980s and 1990s, The Hogs were mostly a memory. Even so, tens, hundreds and thousands of Washington NFL fans still came to their team’s games in Atlanta wearing various costumes and masks associated with swine in honor of The Hogs, the offensive line that led the franchise toward three of their five trips to the Super Bowl.

I dind’t see one person Sunday in a pig snout.

I also didn’t see anybody dressed as somebody driving a rocket ship or Captain Kangaroo or the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island.

You know, a Commander.

In contrast, if you’re a Washington NFL fan, there are lots of things you can do as — say, perhaps — a Red Tail.