Former Washington Commanders cornerback Josh Norman is known to be outspoken. And apparently that helped speed up some changes in the team’s locker room.
Will Blackmon played with Norman in Washington for two seasons and got to know the cornerback pretty well. The former NFL safety joined Craig Hoffman and Logan Paulsen on the Take Command podcast to share some great stories from his career, including one about Norman’s first days in Washington.
After Norman signed with Washington, he wasn’t very fond of the facilities, to say the least.
“He’s walking around, he looks in the locker room and apparently he had been mumbling like ‘what the hell is this?’ Like ‘this looks terrible,’ is what I heard,” Blackmon said (10:58 in player above). “And apparently word got back to Dan Snyder and I think we broke ground like the next week and changed the whole locker room.”
Blackmon had also noticed the outdated locker room, but swore he wasn’t a part of demanding the change.
“I had nothing to do with that,” Blackmon laughed. “I showed up and I’m like ‘OK, this is outdated.’ I remember Tom Carter of the NFLPA, he was like these were the lockers I had back in ‘92. Not kidding, dead serious.”
“Wasn’t there like a signed letter and the whole thing?” Hoffman asked.
“Oh yeah! That’s right, a petition! That’s right,” Blackmon exclaimed. “There was a petition to get people to sign to get a new locker. I don’t know if I signed that damn thing. I didn’t really care. I just wanted to play football… But yeah, that locker room was pretty bad, I’m not gonna lie.”
Blackmon also revealed some insight into Washington’s pitch to get Norman to sign there.
“What I heard is when we went all-in to get Josh and brought him in – here’s what’s messed up: part of the way to lure Josh in is they texted Josh a picture of a jersey #24 and Duke Ihenacho had that jersey. Like damn, dude, they didn’t even talk to Duke about it.”
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