#Ron Rivera says Washington rebranding is ‘16- to 18-month process’

Washington football fans may have to wait up to 18 months for an official rebrand.

After ditching its controversial team nickname and logo after a “thorough review” of its brand earlier this month, the organization enacted an interim name for the 2020 season: the Washington Football Team. But first-year Washington coach Ron Rivera revealed on NFL Network Friday that the process of rebranding may take some time.

“What happened was we found the realization that this is about a 16- to 18-month process,” he said. “This can’t happen instantly. So we’ve really got to do our homework, we’ve got to be very thorough with what we’re doing going forward. Because we want to get it right. We want this new name, this new nickname to be able to stand the test of time, stand for 100 years.

“We’re going to be real busy with that. We’ve hired a firm that wants to be very diligent with their work, they want to be inclusive with their work. We’re going to do this right.”

The organization plans to keep its burgundy and gold color scheme, while team helmets replaced the retired logo with gold numbers.

“The players have reacted very well [to the new uniforms],” Rivera said. “They think the look is very clean. We’ve kept the traditional colors. We’re gonna be burgundy and gold, again because there’s so much history with this football team, and we don’t want to lose that as well. So we’re going to keep the colors.

“But the players like how clean it looks and how those things are concerned. They also like the idea of having numbers on the side of their helmets, and the Alabama players seem to be pretty excited about that. So it’s gonna be a cool thing as we go forward.”

The initial decision to change the name and logo came after heavy public pressure from the team’s corporate sponsors, including FedEx, Nike and PepsiCo. Ten days after launching a review of the name and logo, the franchise announced that they would be “retiring” the Redskins brand.

Rivera also commented on bombshell Washington Post’s report in which 15 women accused former Washington employees of sexual harassment.

“The unfortunate part about the story is that those women that were named unfortunately didn’t feel empowered enough to step up and file these claims so that something could be done about it, and now they’re coming out,” he said. “Well, because they’ve come out now, we’ve had to make decisions and move forward. One of the things that Mr. Snyder has done is he’s hired a law firm to come in, a very prominent one in the D.C. area, to come in and evaluate us and give us suggestions and direction on how we need to do things better.

“That’s one of the things we’ve got to make sure we get straightened out is our culture; we’ve got to create a more inclusive culture again, a culture also that does not allow this, does not accept this. That’s one of the things that’s going to help us as a football team. As we repair and improve who we want to be and what we want to do, I think that’s one of the things that we really have to get right.”