The former Washington Redskins, now playing under the Washington Football Team name, will unveil its new name and branding on Feb. 2–but rumored choices Wolves or RedWolves are not among the finalists.
Team president Jason Wright announced the date for the unveiling, while a series of videos on social media provided some details about the uniform design and colors. Trademarks for the Wolves name presented a challenge toward the use either of Wolves or RedWolves in Washington, he wrote:
First, and I’ll cut to the chase here, we can confirm that, after careful consideration, our team name will not be Wolves or RedWolves. One of the most awesome and powerful aspects of this process has been getting to hear and understand your preferences directly, and we know that many of you loved one or both of these names. And because of that, we want to share some context behind our decision not to move forward with these names. You all deserve nothing less.
Early on we understood Wolves — or some variation of it — was one of our fan favorites. As I’ve said all along, we take feedback from our fans seriously, and because of your interest in this name, we put Wolves on a list of options to explore fully. Once we began looking into Wolves, however, we became aware of a notable challenge: trademarks held by other teams would limit our ability to make the name our own. And without Wolves, variations like RedWolves wouldn’t have been viable either for these and other reasons.
This leaves a strong list of names still in contention for the new Washington Football Team branding: Commanders, Admirals, Armada, Brigade, Sentinels, Defenders, Red Hogs and Presidents:Among the branding details released by the team: the familiar burgundy-and-gold scheme remains, with a definite military theme punctuated with three stars on the collar and stripes on the jersey. A plain W adorns a helmet as well.
First look at the new threads 👀
— Washington Football Team (@WashingtonNFL) January 4, 2022
🤝 @Vistaprint pic.twitter.com/udpnXtdoSv
The Redskins name was retired by the team in July 2020 after years of advocacy from Native American groups, team owners and team sponsors, as well as Congressional calls to dump the name. All played an important role in the decision to drop Redskins, despite vows from owner Dan Snyder to never change the name.
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