He’s more than just “not Dan Snyder”; Harris is a proactive and strategic leader who is rapidly re-shaping the smouldering husk that he purchased into a model NFL franchise
Lots of people have said it before me and better than me, but as I was working on putting together the Daily Slop the other day, I couldn’t help but sit in stupefied amazement at how things have changed for the NFL franchise in Washington.
The bad old days of 2020 — could it be just 5 years ago? — are still vivid in some ways, but also fading like a hard-to-remember bad dream in the morning light.
I remember, in mid-July of 2020, reading a bombshell story about sexual harassment and a toxic workplace in the Washington Post and co-writing a blog piece about it with Bryan Stabbe at a furious pace (I was writing story text in Bangkok as he simultaneously added quotes and links to the story from his home in the US) because it felt like it couldn’t — as most blogs articles can — wait until the next day to get published.
Back then, we freshly-minted Washington Football Team fans collectively wondered aloud whether this could finally be the ‘beginning of the end’ of the toxic ownership that had destroyed the franchise and held us all hostage for over two decades, but none of us really seemed to believe it could happen because of the cockroach-like ability the owner had demonstrated to survive anything.
It turned out to be exactly what we all had hoped for — a giant step forward in a long process of fumigating the infestation of our once proud franchise.
Thirty-six months later, the sale of the team to Josh Harris & Co. was finalized.
In the 22 months since the sale of the team, a sea-change has taken place! Even just hitting on a short list of the biggest highlights is an exercise in amazement.
- Immediate investment in the fan experience
- Expansion of the analytics department
- Ownership getting in front of the cameras and behind the mics to explain the vision
- Adam Peters
- Dan Quinn
- Jayden Daniels
- An exciting brand of football
- A 12-win season
- A pair of playoff wins and an appearance in the NFC Championship game
- A series of wins in the effort to build a new stadium at the RFK site in DC
- Announcement in the oval office (Josh Harris’ 2nd on-camera appearance there this year) that the 2027 NFL Draft is coming to DC
I think it’s fair to say that only the Philadelphia Eagles fans can argue that they’ve had a better run since January 2024 than Commanders fans.
As I was looking through the headlines across the various NFL media platforms to put together the Daily Slop today, I saw stories about the ‘27 Draft coming to DC, about the new stadium, Power Rankings for ‘25 that listed the Commanders among the expected playoff teams, positive reviews of Washington’s recent draft, and highlights of Jayden Daniels’ rookie season. What I didn’t see was anything about fraud, sexual harassment, incompetence, roster mistakes, “damned good culture”, or failures in the effort to locate and build a new stadium. I couldn’t help but pause for a moment and remember how, for years here on Hogs Haven, I would cringe every time I wrote something positive in an article because it was inevitable that one of the first comments would be, “As long as the current owner is here, nothing will matter and nothing good can happen.”
Man, the change from the days of Congressional investigations to Oval Office announcements is pretty damned stark!
Josh Harris is proving to be everything his predecessor was not. Harris invests in the team. He has a strategic vision. He hires capable professionals and then empowers them to do their jobs. He provides the resources — money, manpower & facilities — to achieve excellence. He understands finance, business, power and politics and how to develop a winning culture.
This is not a matter of, as one Eagles fan recently put it, “simply not being terrible.” Josh Harris is more than just “not Dan Snyder”; he is a proactive and strategic leader who is rapidly re-shaping the smouldering husk that he purchased into a model NFL franchise. The Commanders are doing everything right to achieve football success, from drafting, to team-building, to winning on the field.
I guess, given the lopsided outcome of January’s NFC Championship game, Eagles fans stand alone in the NFL in having the right to laugh a little bit at our excitement about what’s happening in Washington, but it’s a mistake to dismiss this as merely a cute blip that results from getting rid of the most toxic owner in professional sports. The Commanders may not be “there” yet, but it takes time to reverse 24 years of rot. The new foundation has been laid and much of the infrastructure put in place to return Washington to prominence as one of the premiere franchises in the league.
Make no mistake, however; this is no sluggish process. The Washington Commanders are less like a slow-moving sea freighter making a gradual course correction and more like an agile sports car executing a rubber-burning 180.
At some point, of course, the blistering pace of change simply has to slow down as Harris & Peters run out of things that are broken and need fixing, but I realized something mildly surprising this week: I’ve already replaced the expectation of some embarrassing action or statement from the owner or team president with the expectation of brutal competence from the people in charge.
Of course, this is remarkable only because the opposite was standard fare from Ashburn for so many years. But when competence becomes the norm, excellence follows, and that transformation has already taken hold. Commanders excellence is being demonstrated regularly now, on the field, off the field, and in the community. The Commanders don’t just look good compared to their distasteful recent history; the Harris, Peters, Quinn-led Commanders franchise stands proud among its peers in the NFL. The momentum has already changed; the pendulum has already swung. The Commanders are no longer a punchline. The team is already looking like a model franchise — a pro sports team that fans can support with joy and pride.
Personally, I’m thrilled to have now reached the point where I’m no longer edgy and waiting for the other shoe to drop — for whatever bad news has been brewing behind the scenes to come to light. Instead of waiting for the second “gotcha”, I feel like I’m standing on the prow of a ship that’s been through a harrowing sea voyage but is now passing through the headlands and into a safe harbor.
And I like the feeling.