The Washington Football Team — and the NFL’s handling of a probe into its team culture — is the subject of a Congressional investigation.

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The Washington Football Team is once again embroiled in crises that have little to do with what is actually happening on the field, including team employee emails containing racist slurs, a botched jersey retirement ceremony, and a DEA investigation that involved agents searching a team facility.

Last Monday, Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden resigned after it was discovered that he had sent emails, including many to then-Washington Football Team President Bruce Allen, with homophobic, misogynistic, and racist slurs and remarks. Some of the emails included photos of half-dressed women, as well as one featuring two Washington Football Team cheerleaders.

The messages date from 2011 to 2018 and were uncovered during the National Football League’s investigation into the Washington Football Team in response to the July 2020 Washington Post report in which more than 20 former employees detailed a culture of sexual harassment and abuse within the franchise.The team initially initiated the investigation. The NFL took over from D.C. attorney Beth Wilkinson and her law firm in September 2020.

On Thursday, with that story circulating, the team announced that they were going to officially rename a road and spend a portion of halftime at a game this Sunday to retire the number of Sean Taylor, the former player who was murdered in 2007 at his home during a robbery. Taylor is only the third player in franchise history to have his number retired.

However, the announcement’s arrival just days before the game left some fans upset about the short notice. Several fans and pundits called the move disingenuous and painted it as an attempt to distract from the Gruden and Allen story.

“At best, it’s terrible management,” NBC Sports Washington’s sports reporter JP Finlay said on his radio show. “At best. And I don’t even like thinking about the deflection and the PR. I mean all the other stuff this could be is terrible, and you’d like to think that decent people don’t act like that. At best, it’s gross mismanagement.”

Team president Jason Wright released a statement Thursday night apologizing to fans and saying “we screwed up the execution and, as a result, we realize that we hurt many of our fans deeply. And for that I and we as an organization are sorry.”

All of this comes days after Drug Enforcement Administration agents executed a search warrant at the team’s training facility in connection to an investigation into the team’s head athletic trainer Ryan Vermillion. The DEA is looking into allegations that Vermillion illegally distributed prescription drugs, a source told the Washington Post earlier this month.

This week has been a microcosm of the team’s troubled last few years, which saw former employees speaking out about the abuse they endured while working for the team, public pressure that finally resulted in them dropping a racist slur as the team name, removing references to former team owner and known segregationist George P. Marshall, the dislike of current owner Dan Snyder, and the constant losing on the field.

The investigation into workplace culture that uncovered the Gruden emails ended this summer and and resulted in a $10 million fine for the team. Additionally, Tanya Snyder, Dan’s wife, took over the team’s day-to-day operations and began representing the franchise at all league activities.

“It is now clear that the culture was not what it should be, but I did not realize the extent of the problems, or my role in allowing that culture to develop and continue,” Dan Snyder said in a statement in June. “I know that, as the owner, I am ultimately responsible for the workplace.”

The email correspondence between then-team president Bruce Allen and Gruden that was uncovered during this investigation showed that Allen participated in and sometimes initiated the offensive conversations, according to the New York Times. The exchanges between the two also included conversations about Colin Kapernick’s kneeling in protest against police brutality. Gruden wrote to Allen that the San Francisco 49ers “should cut this f***” with Allen responding “I’ve expressed my OUTRAGE.”

Allen was fired as team president in late 2019. He’s the son of famed Washington football coach George Allen and the younger brother of George Allen, former Virginia governor and US senator. A source told the Washington Post that it was “highly unlikely” that the NFL would ever let Allen work in the league again.

While the AP is reporting no other NFL personnel sent emails of the nature that Gruden and Allen exchanged, those were far from the only emails reviewed as part of the widespread investigation. More than 650,000 emails were looked at, but so far only snippets have been released to the public, mostly just in the last several days. There was also the revelation that an ESPN reporter sent an unpublished story to Allen asking for edits, which was viewed by many as a violation of journalistic integrity.

A number of emails showed the cozy relationship between Allen and the NFL’s longtime chief lawyer Jeff Pash. They often joked in emails about the team’s troubles, the racist slur that was the team’s nickname at the time (the team plans on announcing a new permanent nickname in 2022), diversity initiatives, and politics, according to the New York Times. Pash also donated $1,000 to Allen’s brother’s Senate campaign in 2012.

Additionally, earlier this year, the team offered financial settlements to a number of former team employees in order to prevent them from speaking with the media or posting on social media any further about their experiences working for the team, according to the Washington Post. It’s not believed any of the former employees accepted the offer.

The Washington Football Team has mostly stayed mum on the subject of emails, Allen’s correspondence with Gruden and others, as well as the financial settlements. DCist/WAMU has reached out to the team on all of this, but the team didn’t respond with a comment on these issues.

Many are calling for more information and emails to be released to the public from the investigation. This includes lawyers representing former team employees and the NFL Players association’s executive director DeMaurice Smith.

Smith said in an interview with USA Today last week that he believes that releasing these emails could shed light on what he called “systemic problems” in the NFL, particularly when it comes to diverse hiring.

A NFL spokesperson told NPR last week that they “have no plans” to release any emails.

All of this happened under the watch of team owner Dan Snyder, who received league approval earlier this year to buy out the minority owners of the team giving him and his family full control of the franchise.

The team is also undergoing a name change, a switch that’s been a long time coming, which potentially could financially benefit Snyder immensely.

As for the Taylor jersey retirement and official road renaming, it appears it was planned to be in conjunction with alumni weekend with former teammates saying they were invited in September (though, Taylor’s brother said he was informed only four days in advance).

“For whatever reason we made a mistake then. We owned the mistake, but we’re still going to honor Sean to the best of our ability and try to do it right from this point,” team head coach Ron Rivera said on Friday. “I mean that’s all we can do. We can’t change anything and we’re sorry, we apologized to the fans just so they know that.”

The five minute jersey retirement and ceremony did go on as planned on Sunday during halftime of the game, with fans not in attendance being able to watch at home via Youtube and social media.

As for what actually happened in the game, the Washington Football Team was crushed by the 2019 Super Bowl champs Kansas City Chiefs and their MVP-winning quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

It was not a good ending to a very bad week for the Washington Football Team.

Filed Under: dc sports, football, investigation, sean taylor, washington football team,