Some sports fans compare passion for their teams to religious worship. For fans of the Washington football team, that devotion has turned into all-out despair. The team’s abysmal 2019 season, public controversies, and dysfunctional leadership have caused many fans to abandon their burgundy and gold convictions altogether.

D.C. native Anthony Brown has a lot of great Washington football memories. But if he had to pick just one … “Boy, the fondest one memory. If it’s one memory it would be the 1987 Super Bowl win.”

The ’87 team beat the heavily favored Denver Broncos 42 – 10. Washington’s quarterback Doug Williams was voted MVP and became the first African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl. Brown says, as an African American, that was a big moment for him. But winning that game meant so much more.

“I was going through a divorce. It was a very tough time, and they were a real pick-me-up when everything else in my life was just going to heck,” Brown recalls.

Brown has been a Washington football fan since 1962. His father purchased season tickets when Bobby Mitchell came to play that season, becoming the team’s first black player. The funny thing is, the team wasn’t even that good in the 1960s. And yet, Brown says, their stadium was always packed. Those season tickets were in Brown’s family for 48 years. In 2010, a decade after Dan Snyder bought the team, Brown gave them up.

“This team will not be fixed until Daniel Snyder wakes up one day, looks in the mirror, points to the man in the mirror and says, ‘You are the problem with this team,’ ” Brown says.

“I find it impossible to believe that he has shielded himself enough to not be aware that everybody blames him for ruining the team that he said he loved,” says Ken Meringolo, founder of the digital media company 1st Amendment Sports and managing editor of the fan site, Hogs Haven. “I’ve always known that the toxicity of the culture—the manner in which the organization is run from Monday through Saturday—ends up on the field on Sunday.”

That toxic culture has reared its ugly head several times in just the last couple of weeks. The team lost its best player, Trent Williams, after he revealed he played for six years with a misdiagnosed tumor on his head. Then there was the team’s decision to allow free safety Montae Nicholson to play after a woman overdosed in his home and eventually died. Fans vented their contempt during last Sunday’s embarrassing loss at home to the New York Jets, who have had an equally disappointing season. It was captured in a video shared on Twitter.

“Sell the team” has gone from disgruntled mantra to angry battle cry. Tried and true fans like Brown and Meringolo are few and far between these days. A recent Washington Post poll this week found that only 13 percent of Washingtonians call the local team their favorite in the NFL. That’s down from 34 percent a decade ago. And yet, the team remains one of the most valuable franchises in sports, worth about $3 billion. But darkness is closing in.

“They severely lag the rest of the NFL,” says Kurt Badenhausen, a senior editor at Forbes. “We have the value of the [Washington football team] up 42 percent over the last five years. That’s the worst in the NFL by a lot. For context, the value of the Rams is up 300 percent.”

Badenhausen says the Washington football team was the most valuable team in the NFL from 2000 to 2006. They were second in the NFL until 2012. Revenue from ticket and luxury suite sales were through the roof. Sponsorships poured in. But local fans have lost that lovin’ feeling.

Anthony Brown says the fall from grace, while long, is not irredeemable. He says, he thinks Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would make a good leader. Bezos has expressed interest in buying a football team. But his sights appear set on the Seattle Seahawks. The Washington football team said in an email to WAMU that Dan Snyder is not considering selling the team.

Meringolo says if he were to take over as owner of the team, he would start from scratch. That includes changing the name, another hot button issue that upsets many would-be fans of the team.

“In the scenario where Ken Meringolo owns the team, I will take all the heat in the world for changing the name and going to the city council and saying, ‘Let’s get the team back in the city. Let’s get things started on the right foot. The former owner has killed the team that used to be here. We’re starting fresh.’ Almost like building an expansion team,” he says.

This Sunday, the 1 – 9 Washington team faces another struggling NFL team, the Detroit Lions, and current odds are not in Washington’s favor.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.