Eliminating distractions is a hallmark of any good team, but some teams just cannot escape them and it shows with the overall team performance on the field. The Washington Commanders might be the team that best describes that notion.
“All the stuff there with just the entire organization from ownership down, head coaching and G.M., there’s historically been a lot of drama there,” former Washington quarterback Alex Smith said on the Rich Eisen Show. “It’s a big market, obviously, the capital and a lot going on, and that organization is a really storied franchise and there’s a lot of turmoil and a lot of distractions.
“So to say the stuff in the building doesn’t infiltrate the locker room or out on the field would be crazy. That’s what happens everywhere. I think that’s what great organizations eliminate and the bad ones have a hard time with. All that noise creeps into the building. Yeah, it does. It does affect the product on the field.”
“There’s a lot of distractions — that entire organization, everything surrounding it — and obviously, deservedly,” Smith said. “It’s been flawed the last 20 years. There’s a lot of stuff going on there, a lot of distractions, and it makes it difficult to kind of focus in on the football.”
The Commanders were fined $10 million by the NFL last year after a hostile work environment investigation found so many issues that were not released publicly.
On top of that, the Washington Post that 15 women accused the team of sexual harassment in the workplace. In 2008, a former senior executive took video of the teams’ cheerleaders during a calendar shoot while they were partially naked.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral NFL stories via Google! Follow Us
Congress as well as the National Football League are investigating sexual harassment allegations levied at Snyder from former employees. With so many issues, three sponsors have cut ties with the Commanders in the past year, with Anheuser-Busch being the latest.
Washington has made just six postseason appearances since Snyder bought the team in 1999.
The team went 7-10 last season, which came after they qualified for the postseason in 2020.
