Welcome to CommiesFootball.com! I am Rokk and I have been a lifelong Washington Redskins/Football Team/Commanders fan. I went to my first Washington Redskins game when I was six years old. I was lucky enough that my father had season tickets at RFK stadium during the Redskins’ glory years. I was also blessed enough to be able to go to all four Super Bowls that the Redskins played in during my childhood. I love all sports, but the Redskins were always front and center in my life as my most favorite sports team of them all.
Of course, growing up in the glory days of the Redskins, I thought that being a perennial playoff contender and going to Super Bowls was something that would never end. I had only known the Redskins as an extremely professional and classy organization. Ah, the foolishness and naivety of youth.
As we all know, Dan Snyder purchased the Washington Redskins for $800 million in 1999. I did not know it at the time, but this was the beginning of the end. Since that fateful moment, the Washington Redskins became a pathetic shell of what they were in my youth. Snyder’s Redskins became inept on the field and unprofessional and embarrassing off of the field.
I am not going to go through the laundry list of gaffes both on and off the field under the Snyder regime. We all know them by heart. What once was a source of pride and enjoyment quickly became a source of frustration, anger, and embarrassment. These feelings got worse and worse with each year under the Snyder regime.
It was during the John Gruden tenure that I entered into a new stage of my relationship with the Washington Redskins that I did not expect. I stopped caring. The frustration. The anger. The embarrassment. It all melted away. In its place was an overwhelming sense of apathy. Who cared anymore? Why both? As long as Dan Snyder owned the team the Redskins would always be an unlikable team off the field and a horrendous Keystone Cops team on the field. Nothing was going to ever change so why bother?
After announcing the retirement of the Redskins name, the Washington franchise then announced that they would be named the Washington Football Team while they conducted an in-depth rebranding process to decide their new name and branding. At this moment, I realized that while Dan Snyder had taken my love for the Redskins away from me, now the NFL was taking the logo and the brand that I loved. It was a crushing moment.
Things got even worse with 2-2-2022. A date that will live in infamy. This was the most pathetic and embarrassing rollout of the new team name and brand that one could imagine. Once again, Dan Snyder lived up to his history as a bumbling oaf. The rollout of the Commander name and branding was botched from the very start with the cringe-fueled “AH-HAH!” from Craig Melvin on the Today show. That “AH-HAH” still rings in my ears and haunts me in my sleep. It was like a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch. Poor Doug Williams and Jonathan Allen looked like helpless hostages at that moment. Meanwhile, Jason Wright looked like the carpetbagging slick corporate type with no clue.
And when you thought it could not get any worse, we got Dan and Tanya Snyder unveiling the new uniforms with the atmosphere of a funeral. It was so lifeless and anti-climactic. Just a shabby black curtain that was dropped to unveil a flimsy Dick’s Sporting Goods display of the new uniforms. My God. Could Snyder have not even convinced any of his players to show up to wear the uniforms on stage?
But, the clueless bungling was not done just yet! The Commanders’ new crest was unveiled with all of the Championship dates incorrect! You thought it was the 1982 Washington Redksins that won the Super Bowl? Nope. It was the 1983 Washington Redskins. Then we had to sit through Jason Wright defending the dates that were chosen for the championship teams employing logic that seemed detached from reality.
At this point, all hope had been drained from my soul. Dan Snyder was still the owner of the team and not only ruining the team on the football field but bringing one off-field scandal after another to the franchise. It became impossible to root for the team anymore. Losing the Washington Redskins name and branding was the final nail in the coffin. There was no reason to ever expect the team to be good with Snyder as the owner. And now, with the Washington Commanders name and branding it looked like the Washington Redksins had left town and the NFL had awarded the city of Washington a new expansion team in the Commanders. I simply could not get excited about an expansion team owned by Snyder.
However, then it happened, on April 13, 2023, Dan Snyder agreed to sell the team. Then on May 12, 2023, it became official when Dan Snyder announced he was selling the team to Josh Harris and Co. The NFL then approved the sale on July 20, 2023, and holy shit! It was an all-new reality in the DMV! Ding dong, the witch is finally effing dead! The impossible had finally happened. Dan Snyder was no longer the owner of the Washington football franchise. Dan Snyder slunk off like Golem after losing his precious ring. Suddenly, I felt something I had never felt before. Hope. Optimism. Perhaps with a real owner the Washington football franchise could once again become an actual legitimate NFL franchise.
My enthusiasm only increased with the drafting of Jayden Daniels. For the first time in an eternity, it looked like the Washington football franchise finally had a competent owner, a real general manager, and a true franchise quarterback. All the ingredients necessary to have sustained long-term success in the NFL.
With that, I decided to start CommiesFootball.com. Why did I pick this name for the website? Well, once Commanders got leaked as the new name for the Washington franchise, people on social media immediately complained that fans of other teams would call the Commanders the “Commies.” That also played Into the fact that the Washington colors of red and yellow match up perfectly with the colors of the Soviet Union and Communist China. The militaristic theme of the look of the Commanders also played into the Communist feel of everything. All of it led to the Commies nickname just being spot on.
Look, the Commanders name and branding are truly awful. One of the worst in all of professional sports. On top of that it reeks of the noxious stench of Dan Snyder.
Now, what can you expect from CommiesFootball.com? Well, I am not here to try and pretend I am an amateur general manager or a brilliant football coach. I am not going to pretend to be an expert scout. I will leave that for the myriad of other Washington Commanders websites out there.
What you can expect here at CommiesFootball.com are humorous and off-beat takes on our beloved Washington Commanders. Will we talk about some stats? Sure. Will we talk about game strategy? Yup. Will we talk about draft needs and free-agent targets? Of course. But, the main emphasis is going to be on having fun and retaining a sense of humor about everything.
If you want to contact us you can email us at commiesfootball@gmail.com or find us on Twitter.
Hail to the Commies!