When Ron Rivera was presented to the media by owner Daniel Snyder as Washington's new head coach in January 2020, Rivera was touted as the franchise’s new face and voice.
Snyder spoke at great lengths for somebody who does not often appear in front of cameras about how Rivera was hired to not only fix the football team’s losing culture but the entire organization’s, as well.
"What the Redskins have needed is a culture change. Someone that can bring a winning culture to our organization. And it starts and ends with our head coach,” Snyder said at the press conference. “One thing that’s very, very important, we’re going to have one voice and one voice alone. And that’s the coach’s.”
Fourteen months later, the team’s literal face and name have changed and the NFL has taken over an investigation of the team’s culture following multiple reports of sexual misconduct and improper workplace behavior by team executives.
On the field, Rivera went 7-9 and won the NFC East. And in his second offseason, he began to flex his power within the organization by stocking the team’s front office with familiar faces from his time in Carolina.
As Rivera prepares for free agency and the NFL Draft, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced attorney Beth Wilkinson’s investigation of Snyder and the team was nearing its conclusion. The question now is whether that report will be made public.
A group of 20 former WFT employees who participated in the investigation sent Goodell an open letter demanding the report’s findings be made public and gained the support of the influential women’s organization Time’s Up.
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But the league and team have not said whether they would release the report's findings.
So what happened when Rivera, the voice and face of the organization, was asked if he believes the report into the culture of the organization he represents should be made public? He deflected.
"That's beyond me right now," Rivera said Wednesday. “That’s not for me to say. The biggest thing I’m here to talk about right now is the draft, free agency, and our football team as far as where we are today and where we are going forward.”
The Team 980’s Kevin Sheehan said on Thursday Rivera’s deflection was a missed opportunity for the face and voice of the franchise.
“And Ron Rivera, I think, could have offered a bit more on that,” Sheehan said, while adding Rivera did not have to be definitive one way or the other declaring if the investigation should be made public.
“But this is an organization that promised, across the board, transparency back in July. And that should have been part of the answer,” Sheehan said. “Part of the answer from the face and voice of the franchise shouldn’t have been to completely blow it off as if it was not appropriate for that press conference.”
When Snyder handed oversight of the investigation to the NFL, he said he did so so to ensure “the results are thorough, complete and trusted by the fans, the players, our employees and the public.”
Sheehan added: “I think blowing it off was not appropriate for [Rivera’s] position within the organization. I don’t think he needed to go into great detail, but that was a total blow-off answer. He’s the face and voice of the franchise.”
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And as the face and voice, Sheehan says Rivera (and likely the Washington public relations staff who prepped him to answer a potential question about the investigation) declined to say something along the lines of: “This is an investigation that’s on-going. We haven’t seen the findings (if that’s true). We await them. We continue to work as an organization to put procedures and put protocols into place to ensure what went on here doesn’t go on here anymore. We’re very pleased with a lot of the work that [new team president] Jason [Wright] and his team have done, what Tanya and Dan have continued to support and have done. And we await that investigation and we will certainly respond to it in a serious matter that it deserves. And I’ll have much more on that when it is appropriate.”
Rivera said none of that when asked on Wednesday.
“I thought the answer,” Sheehan said, “was too much of a blow-off for something that right now for the organization is serious.”
(Listen to the segement from Thursday's show beginning at 42:50 here:)
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