After 13 months of trying to come up with a new name, the Washington Football Team is on the verge of finally making that happen. Washington has officially narrowed its list of potential new names down to just three options.
The team made the announcement on Monday during an episode of their YouTube Series, "Making the Brand." The three-minute episode opens with team president Jason Wright showing the names to Washington coach Ron Rivera. At the end of the episode, Wright lists the three finalists for the team's new name, although we don't actually get to learn the names of the finalists due to some clever editing (But they did potentially give us some clues!).
"So the three that we'll go through are: [beeped out], [beeped out] and [beeped out]," Wright says in the video.
Rivera then responded by saying that he "really liked" one of the names, but once again, we don't know the actual name because it was bleeped out. The Washington Post confirmed with the team that it has narrowed the list of potential team names down to three.
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"We started out with 40,000 submissions and began from there to winnow down to a smaller amount," Wright says in the video. "It gave us a broad view of how the public and the fan base feel about us as an organization and where they want to see us go."
Although we don't know the three potential names that Washington is looking at, the YouTube video did offer a few clues. At one point in the video, the team invited fans to FedEx Field and those fans were asked about several new names that the team was considering.
Here's a list of the eight names that were shown in Monday's video (The team was still considering roughly 30 names back in April, so the fact that these eight made the cut would indicate that one or more of them might be one of the three finalists):
Armada
Brigade
Commanders
Defenders
Presidents
RedHogs
RedWolves
Washington Football Team
For several of the names, Washington even came up with new logos, which tells you that these names are (or were) under serious consideration. For instance, here's a look at the Washington Presidents logo, which features a "W" that has the Washington monument cleverly designed into the middle of it.
(If you want to see some of the other logos the team revealed in their YouTube video, you can check those out by clicking here)
On one hand, the team could be trying to throw us off its trail by revealing eight names in the video that they don't plan on using. However, the fact that "Washington Football Team" is one of the eight names makes me think that all three finalists are on that list of eight. Wright has been saying for months that keeping Washington Football Team as the name is something that the organization is seriously considering.
As for when the new name will finally be announced, Wright has said over the past month that the team is aiming for early 2022. The guess here is that Washington will wait until after the Super Bowl to unveil its new name, but will want to make the change before the draft, so expect it to happen somewhere between Feb. 14 and April 27.
