The Washington Commanders
I hate how much news dropped in a span of like 3 days. Why couldn’t this happen in July when I have nothing to work with? The Tom Brady and Flores lawsuit will have to wait, maybe Brady next week, because both of those things are big and I need to give them a little more time to percolate. Especially the Flores lawsuit. That won’t be resolved anytime soon anyway.
But we can shit on the Commanders right now!
Short review: meh. Could have been worse, far less interesting than Football Team was.
Long review:
Washington was always going to pick a boring military-sounding name. When the news broke that the name would change I fully expected something generic. I predicted “Generals” and frankly wasn’t far off. They were never going to do Redhawks or Redhogs or even the Hogs, because that would have actually been cool? But I held out hope that the positive response to Football Team would actually make a lasting impression. Washington accidentally stumbled onto genius with Football Team and they wasted it. It was unique, it was classic, and it provided great jokes. Even the subtle uniform changes were good (I wasn’t a fan of the numbers on the helmets, but I don’t like numbers on helmets, I prefer sparse or simple logo helmets).
Now they went and basically made everything worse. Some of it is only a bit worse, some of it a lot worse. I’ll start with the stuff I’m fine with and even like.
-The font on the numbers is good
-I actually kinda love the nameplate being between two lines like the logo. Sadly this is only on the weird black alternate uniforms.
-The little round classic seal is nice
-The updated W logo with the “fold lines” I think looks good, actually. Maybe a bit worse than the previous solid W, but I’m fine with it.
-I like the single gold line on the helmet
-I’m going to be in the minority here, but I like the little gold W on the alt uniform helmet. I actually kinda like the Black alt, it’s interesting. But it doesn’t feel like Washington. It looks like a Steelers alt.
Stuff I don’t like
-The 3 uniforms have no real cohesion to them. They all look like they could be 3 different teams. The home jersey looks fine (except the stupid logo over the numbers, stop doing that). The black alternate looks like the Steelers (and the logo is in a better spot), and the white away looks like…Florida state ripoffs? I hate the away uniforms. Where is the gold? It’s burgundy and gold and we really only have one uniform displaying that. The Burgundy and Gold was one of the best uniforms in the league and they took it away. Give me more gold.
-The mesh pattern on the numbers and shoulders looks stupid, especially on the away jersey. It’s passable on the other two, but it looks awful and busy on the White ones.
-I’m meh on Matte helmet finishes. I prefer my helmets shiney.
-The full-word logo is boring as hell. The W is okay, but the COMMANDERS between 2 lines is quite dull.
Things I absolutely love:
People are already calling them “The Commies”. I can’t believe those bozos in charge didn’t see this one coming. The team can be called The Commies, they have red and yellow colors, they play for the government capital, it’s incredible accidental self-ownage. The ability to call them the Commies makes almost the entire rebrand worth it. Plus, it’s great, because it’s exactly the kind of nickname that’ll piss off the crowd who are already mad they changed from the slur name.
Overall:
While I’m not surprised with the boring, generic name, I am surprised they changed their look-up as much as they did. Washington had one of the best uniforms in the league. All they had to do was keep it, but have a new logo and name, and it would have been stellar. The temporary WFT rebrand felt more inspired than this and I can’t believe it took 2 years for them to come up with something this bland. It’s not offensively bad, but it isn’t inspiring. Some folks have pointed out that it’ll seem fine soon enough once we are used to it, and yeah, it will. That’s what’s sad about it. It’ll never stand out. It’ll never be interesting.
Oh, and a reminder that the rebrand changes nothing about the vile ownership. A day after the announcement, the Washington Commanders are in a senate hearing about their toxic workplace culture. They timed this announcement to distract from that news, you can bet on it. The team name changed, and that’s good. But there is so much filth to this franchise that still needs to be scrubbed, and I’m glad the rebrand has largely been seen as a negative because those fucks at the top don’t deserve nice things.
I leave you with the new fight song.
Hail to the Commies
Kill the Bourgeoisie
Brave fighting comrades
Topple the power in DC
Run or pass and rights we want more
Hammer em sickle em let the points soar
Fight on Fight on till you have won
Sons of Marx, rah rah rah
Hail to the Commies
Seize the means of victory
The number gradients make me think of raster bars in a Commodore 64 PD demo. And not good ones either.
Fuck Nike, give the uniform contract to Genesis Project or Crest.
So they removed the natives and replaced them with military?
Seems incredibly fitting for Washington D.C. and truly representative of the American Way, if you ask me.
If the Snyders ever sell or are forced out, is it possible there’ll be a reset and they’ll pick a better name?
If the Commanders/Commies joke holds, will it end up being embraced with alternate nicknames like “The Red Army”, jokes about it being Red October if they have a strong stretch in weeks 4-8, jokes about players falling out with new coaches being purged/sent to Siberia, etc?
Whenever they get a new stadium, the “Re-Education Center” will make for a nice ring. Start calling Fedex Field the “Gulag Archipelago” .
The fight song rewrite is fantastic
The home and away uniforms don’t look like they belong to the same team.
You are being far too forgiving. It looks like they paid someone for 3 entirely different concepts, and then the morons in charge said, “Well, what if we just mash all 3 into one glorious sh$@show??”
I do graphic/multimedia design, which isn’t quite the same as this, but it happens so often, I have to imagine at least one of the poor uniform designers behind this is crying right now.
“Can’t you just take comp 1, comp 2, and comp 3, and just… mash them all together?”
“But… they’re entirely different. They don’t go together like legos! Look… *splatters them all together* Can’t you see how AWFUL this looks?”
“OMG, I LOVE IT! Finalize!”
UGGGGH. I hate the W, hate the color scheme, hate the random variations on the numbers, hate how busy they are. REALLY hate the black one. Logo/name aside, their previous look was simple, clean, and effective. This is a nightmare sh#$show.
… so actually, I guess that means I love it, because F those guys. I can’t decide if I’m going to just keep calling them WTF, or if I work Commies into it. “Commies… WTF” “WTF Commies”. I’ll have to play with it.
It seems very on brand for them to fuck it up this badly.
Fail to see the obvious non-flattering nickname? Check
Fail to see that said nickname goes great with your colors? Check
Fail to keep it a secret before the reveal? Check
Fail to have well-designed uniforms despite 2 years to design them? Check
The way the pads show through on the white pants is awful and basically highlights the player’s crotch.
I respect that you rewrote our fight song. It has a “Die Eagles, Die” vibe to it. Bravo!
Hail to the Commies…
The name underlined reminds me of the old Giants helmets. I suppose you don’t if we rip that off from you.
2 of the 3 uni sets do not feature burgundy and gold. *facepalm*
The only positive that I can see from this is that the new rule change allowing 2 completely different helmet colors means that more teams can do true throwback unis (i.e. the Seahawks will FINALLY be able to use their old logo and silver helmet for a 70’s/80’s throwback set).
actually, the steelers knockoff has burgundy-outlined gold numbers
For over a decade, teams could change the helmets’ stickers at will, but not the helmet base color. That prevented, for example, the Eagles from using the popular kelly green throwbacks. On the plus side, it also prevented them from using Frankford Yellow Jackets throwbacks.
The W logo is fine, the rest is weak to flat out terrible.
The name is reminiscent of the Washington Commandos, an original Arena League team. I would have chosen about any of the other options floated out there. Personally, I would have considered “Bravery” as both a callback to the team’s original name and a more creative retooling of an originally American Indian-inspired name than the many many “Red”-suffix or Prefix-“hawks” there are out there… but no one asked me.
It does make the Cleveland Guardians name look better, though.
As a designer, I’m always excited to see new jerseys because generally either too cutting edge (Tampa’s Time Out unis with that god-awful font, or JAX two-tone fade helmets) or they don’t change hardly anything. This is the most low-key awful change we’ve seen in some time. Jersey’s should be iconic and instantly-recognizable through color (DET’s Honolulu Blue) or pattern (CIN Bengal stripes). As you noted 2/3 of these uniforms look like they belong to ANOTHER TEAM!! Not to mention there’s no unifying font, logo, color scheme. The patterns are dumb. The only thing they did well was remove the leg stripes in favor of a nice clean pant.
I have a saying in my line of work “You can’t buy taste.” For all the millions and billions of dollars those scumballs have at the top in WAS, they can’t hide who they really are.
I absolutely hate this. The name is just sort of eh, but the new logo and uniforms are unilaterally worse than the WFT ones. Unlike the Guardians, they can’t behind “well at least it’s better than the old one”. We tasted something better with WFT. It’s ridiculous what they’ve done.
Alex, please stop calling. We’re set at QB.
God, why is it ALWAYS the teams with the best unis that do the worst redesigns? The Rams, great blue and yellow unis, they pop on TV, have a classic look that doesn’t age, so let’s change that so they look like they’re wearing fucking Butterfingers wrappers. The Jets, I loved their modern version of their old Namath unis. Oh, wait, let’s look like Michigan State instead because, Jets? Even the Raiders, the fucking RAIDERS, understood not to ever fuck with their uniforms, because they’ve always looked boss as hell.
I’m Washington Commander Shepard and this is my least favorite team name in the NFL
Because you’re a big, STUPID, jellyfish!
i said it before, but: a TEAM of “commanders” is like “The Lone Rangers”
fuckin dumb
They couldn’t have picked the generals, as there’s a basketball team that already has that name. On that note, thanks for making me have the globetrotter whistle theme stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
The jerseys are even worse than the name Commanders. Why would you change a decent looking color scheme they had as Teamthatshallnotbenamed and WFT?!
The home uni, the strongest of the three, they went from white number with yellow outline to yellow numbers? Downgrade.
The away uni went from one of the best in the nfl to total trash. Looks awful.
The alternate, as Dave said, looks like a Steelers alt uni
Only the helmet is an improvement, and it is minor.
The fight song is epic genius. The last line doesn’t scan well, though. How about “Break the Power in DC.” where the downbeat is on “Power” and “Break the” are the last beat in the prior measure? Sort of like “Break-the-POWer in DC.”
PS I grew up in DC during the Joe Gibbs era and I hated that song long before Dan Snyder ever got a whiff of the team.
Also, “Sublevel 4?” I see Sexy Rexy is still going deep…
To be honest, I amazed that with the cheerleader scandals going on that Command Hers wasn’t the big oof regarding the name.
Gotta say, I like how it’s never not Niketober. Yeah yeah, I know it’s a template, but the sentiment stands. Also, dickbutt.
With Flores lawsuit going on, do you think the league got Flored?
My first thought was a new marketing slogan:
“Going Commando!”
“Hogs” is a great idea and would’ve been a bold “thank you” to the long suffering and well deserving fans. It would have been the first sports team that I’m aware of who named itself in honor of it’s fans–kind of innovative. But as we all know Washington isn’t known for innovation, good ideas, bold leadership, or concerning itself with the common man.