The new ownership group of the Washington Commanders may change the name of the franchise they bought from Dan Snyder, but they will not use the team's old nickname Redskins.
"We could take the easy way out and say we're not focused on that right now. What I can tell you is we're not focused on the previous name," Mitchell Rales, one of the three top partners in the ownership consortium led by Josh Harris, said when asked about the Commanders' name Wednesday evening at an event in Washington D.C.
"That ship has sailed. We're not going to relitigate the past. We're about the future," Rales said, via the Washington Post's Nicki Jhabvala. "We're about building the future and not having a divisive culture that we're engaged in.
"We're going to look at everything come the end of the year and think about a lot of different things and do a lot of testing and see what people think. And we'll learn. The beauty is we have the time to look at all of this stuff intelligently, and make fan-based decisions."
The comments from Rales Wednesday were the first from the new owners to shut down a call for the old name after team president Jason Wright told 106.7 The Fan's BMitch & Finlay last week, that a return to the Redskins name was “not being considered.... Period.”
Snyder, who sold the franchise for a NFL record $6.05 billion in July, announced the new Commanders moniker on Feb. 2, 2022 after the team had played the previous two seasons as the Washington Football Team. The organization dropped the Redskins name in July 2020.