The Washington Commanders, who are good at literally nothing aside from creating scandals, rolled out the “Commander 90” over the weekend to add another 10 players to their list of the greatest in franchise history to commemorate the 90th year of the team.
The Washington Commanders even screwed up honoring their greatest players
This is bad, even by Commanders standards.
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
If you thought this would go smoothly, or be rolled out well — then you just don’t understand the Washington Commanders. The biggest omission everyone noticed was the apparent pettiness in leaving off Trent Williams, one of the greatest modern players in team history, while the likes of Kirk Cousins and Robert Griffin III were on the list. Williams was presumably left off because he requested a trade, and after some furor the nine-time Pro Bowlers was added to the list.
Jake Russell of the Washington Post chronicled the, frankly hilarious, number of screwups in the rollout of the Commander 90 — and it’s like something out of a sitcom. This is everything that was wrong with the list when it was first dropped.
- Trent Williams omitted
- Joe Lavender was spelled incorrectly, and listed as “Joe Lavendar”
- LaVern Torgeson was spelled incorrectly, and listed as “Laverne Torgeson”
- A photo purporting to be of Sammy Baugh’s final game in 1952 had him wearing a leather helmet, which were phased out of the NFL in 1949.
- Sammy Baugh was listed for playing for the team from 1957-1964. Baugh retired in 1952, which they even established in their incorrect slide about his final game.
- A slide of Doug Williams showed his tenure as “1986-1986.” He played four seasons and retired in 1989.
- Hugh Taylor was listed as playing from 1974-1985. If this was accurate he would have been 51 years old as a rookie and retired at 62. He actually played from 1947-1954.
- The copy for forming the “Commander 90” said that the team began with 70 players in 2002, then “added another 80 individuals” in 2012 — now adding 10 more in 2022. This would be 160 players, not 90.
- The team ignored that Joe Gibbs coached the team from 2004-07, instead just noting he coached from 1981-1992.
Let’s be real, this was probably a task given to an intern or a low-level employee who didn’t get the resources or support to appreciate what they were doing, and nobody checked their work. Lord know I’ve made a ton of typos too — it just comes with the territory of writing sometimes. However, this was supposed to be honoring the most important figures in franchise history by the team that knows them better than anyone else, and they still managed to make some of the worst mistakes imaginable.
The site has now been updated fully, and ... there are still mistakes at the time of writing. Alfred Morris’ tenure is incorrect, the team misspelled Mark Murphy as “Mark Murphey.” At least the Commanders are getting closer to having the correct information about their most important players.
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