The Washington Football Team retired the No. 21 jersey in honor of the late, great Sean Taylor last month. It was supposed to have been a memorable occasion for the team, Taylor’s family and Washington fans.
Thanks to the hastily announced decision just days before, the jersey retirement didn’t go as planned. Washington didn’t announce Taylor’s jersey retirement until a few days before the game, and the team drew criticism from media and fans alike.
The timing was an issue. The leaked emails that cost former Raiders head coach Jon Gruden his job created more negative publicity for Washington. Several former female employees of the team were demanding the NFL to release all of the emails from Beth Wilkinson’s yearlong investigation into Washington’s toxic workplace culture.
So, announcing the jersey retirement of the most popular player in the Dan Snyder era was a good way to talk about something else, at least according to some. It’s important to note, Washington had already planned to honor Taylor by naming a road after him near FedEx Field. It’s uncertain if the team had actually intended to retire Taylor’s jersey at the same time.
Team president Jason Wright apologized.
Now, over one month later, Wright was a guest of the Sports Junkies on Friday and admitted Washington botched Taylor’s jersey retirement.
“When you make a change that quickly, you lose a little bit of institutional knowledge and you can definitely lose a lot of connection to the history of this club,” Wright said, per Matt Weyrich of NBC Sports Washington.
That’s something that has happened and we need to course correct…like the way that we royally F’d up the Sean Taylor jersey retirement. I’m so grateful that the family was blessed and so rewarded and so honored, but our fans didn’t get the right opportunity to celebrate that.
Wright deserves credit for owning this, whether it was decision or not. He also understood what Taylor meant to the fans.
“Part of that is the institutional knowledge that we lost and the understanding that even if we had done a best-class jersey retirement according to NFL standards, that wouldn’t have been enough because this is a spiritual thing for this fanbase,” Wright said.
“This is something much, much deeper and we needed a much more comprehensive approach, and so we’re going to hire back into the organization and bring back into the organization the right institutional knowledge and connection to the history.”
Whether or not Washington deliberately announced Taylor’s jersey retirement to take some of the attention from the NFL investigation or not, the team still messed up. Washington planned Bobby Mitchell’s jersey retirement months in advance. And Wright did the right thing by taking responsibility instead of blaming others.
Wright continues to shine in his role, which may be one of the most challenging jobs in professional sports.