Mitchell Rales on Commanders’ former name: ‘That ship has sailed’

When Josh Harris and his partners took over as owners of the Washington Commanders in July, the topic of another name change lingered. Harris and one of his partners, Magic Johnson, dropped the old Redskins name multiple times. In an appearance on the TODAY Show, Johnson told Craig Melvin that “everything is on the table” as it pertained to a name change.

Since that time, Harris has been asked about a potential name change. He often instead says his focus is on improving the fan experience, FedEx Field and the 2023 season. He never confirms or denies if his group is considering a name change.

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That led to a petition from the Native American Guardians Association [NAGA] to create a petition to bring the “Redskins” name back. Everyone knew that wasn’t happening, but until team president Jason Wright said the old name was not even a consideration recently, there were no denials from the franchise.

On Wednesday, Harris and partner Mitchell Rales were interviewed at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., and were interviewed about several topics related to the Commanders.

Of course, the name was among the topics. And Rales quickly put the debate about the old name to bed.

“We could take the easy way out and say we’re not focused on that right now,” Rales said, per Nicki Jhabvala of The Washington Post. “What I can tell you is we’re not focused on the previous name. That ship has sailed. We’re not going to relitigate the past. We’re about the future. We’re about building the future and not having a divisive culture that we’re engaged in. We’re going to look at everything come the end of the year and think about a lot of different things and do a lot of testing and see what people think. And we’ll learn. The beauty is we have the time to look at all of this stuff intelligently and make fan-based decisions.”

Now that’s the perfect answer. Rales hit on everything. He put the debate to bed if there was a debate left. He acknowledged that a name change was in play and that the fans would be involved.

And unlike the previous name change, fans should feel confident that Harris, Rales, Johnson and the rest of the ownership group are serious about including the community and fans as a part of any potential rebranding.