Wednesday, February 02, 2022

WFT Rebrand: Texas Did This Better Too

As a lifelong Washington football fan, I'm rather obligated to put up my take on the new name and uniforms revealed today.  Being a fan of the team is a tough job.  There are a few NFL followings that are tougher, but not many.  And it didn't get a whole lot easier today.

The Commanders isn't horrible on it's own, but it does lend itself to perversion into "Commies" (to become the Patriots natural rivals instead of the Cowboys?)  It would have been worse with the "Red Tails" tribute to the WWII fighter pilots (of another geographical area) which I'm sure would have been what Dallas fans would call us after "they just done whipped those tails."

The circular logo is the nicest, though it was pointed out that the championship year is not the year that the Super Bowl game was played, but the previous year's season.

The folded W is a slight downgrade in my opinion.  My first thought was that it is a stylized version of the list of charges that Snyder is about to receive in the Congressional hearings that are coming up soon.


The uniforms are surprisingly bland.  I expected a fancier design, especially with the gradients and embroidered stars that were teased before the reveal.  The stars actually appear inside the jersey collar - where you can't see them - brilliant.  There are no stripes down the sides of any of the three ensembles, so it's like Color Rush every week.  And the wordmark is huge on the regular home jerseys.  Wouldn't mind that as much, but the font is really generic and doesn't quite inspire the military flavor that the containing stripes are also supposed to suggest.  The number fonts aren't bad, there are worse around the league.  I think I like the black uni's scheme the best, even though it's still a bit spartan and was created to follow a fad that has probably passed.  Hopefully these will all evolve in the next few years.

This isn't the first we've seen of this name in this decade.  The San Antonio franchise of the Alliance of American Football was also the Commanders.  And they executed it very well.  Every team in that league had deep meaning to their community.  This team even played in the Alamo Dome.  The Alamo appears in the logo along with a Lone Star and a sword.  The burgundy and red color scheme works rather well, I think. 

Blended with the right amount of white, it's a very distinctive look.  The nameplates and numbers on the helmets (one side) are a nice touch.

The helmets were their best feature.  Two colors, the side numbers matched by the regular logo on the other side, plus the subtle Alamo in the back with the city initials.  

I guess I like Riddell's style a lot more than Nike's.  You can already see what could have been a much better executed Washington design has already been a victim of Nikefication from the jump.

And once again, the Texas people come out ahead...


Oh and there is this one other curious fact - remember what the Bidens welcomed around Christmas time?





5 comments:

  1. I think the name is an upgrade from Redskins and Football Team. It's clearly better than Bills, Browns, and Texans.

    The ketchup and mustard combo was hideous. So again, a slight upgrade. I think Snyder mentioned a while back that he didn't want to stray too far from their traditional colors, so the upside with the new look was limited.

    I do like the San Antonio team's helmets.

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  2. I kind of grew to like WFT, as weird as it was.I was really hoping for the Hogs.

    I think the Washington area overdoes it with patriotic-type names. Senators, Nationals, Commanders, Sentinels (in the movie The Replacements). Just a personal POV, but always feels like the easy way out and gets in the way of being creative.

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  3. Not the biggest fan of the team nickname, but I'm sure it'll grow on me. I thought the whole WFT thing was silly too, but like TLC... I grew to like it.

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  4. Texas does everything better. :)

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  5. They should've just went back to the Redskins... it was a good name!

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