Jason Wright, who became the face of the Washington Commanders’ attempt to transform their workplace culture after being hired four years ago as the first Black team president in NFL history, will move out of that role immediately and will leave the organization by the end of the upcoming season, Wright and Commanders owner Josh Harris said.
Wright will assume the title of senior adviser while maintaining his responsibilities as the team’s de facto president, focusing primarily on its search for a new stadium site and stadium naming rights partner. Harris and Tad Brown, the chief executive of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, will lead the search for the Commanders’ next president.
“This feels like the right moment for me to explore my next leadership opportunity,” Wright said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “I’m extremely grateful to my Commanders colleagues, our fans and this community for all that we have accomplished these past four years, and am looking forward to the start of a very successful season for the Burgundy and Gold.”
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Wright — whose previous contract was set to expire next month, according to two people with knowledge of its terms — met with members of the team’s business staff Thursday afternoon to inform them of his pending exit. Should he find his next job before the season ends, the team will support an expedited exit for him, a person familiar with the Commanders’ planning said.
“Jason has made a remarkable impact on the Commanders organization since he joined four years ago,” Harris said in a statement to The Post. “He stepped in at a time of immense challenge and has led this organization through an incredible transformation that set that stage for everything that is to come. I am extremely grateful to Jason for his partnership to me and the rest of the ownership group over the past year. His guidance has been invaluable and his leadership has helped reshape our culture.”
Wright’s departure is the latest major change amid a franchise-wide overhaul of operations under Harris, who purchased the team last year from Daniel Snyder for a record $6.05 billion. Since the start of this year, the Commanders have hired Adam Peters as their general manager and Dan Quinn as their coach, revamped their front office and coaching staff and reworked the roster.
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Such sweeping changes were not feasible for the 2023 season after Harris and his group took over last summer; their purchase closed just before the start of training camp. Harris’s first year with the Commanders was devoted largely to evaluating the franchise’s operations while making incremental improvements and rebuilding relations with alumni and community leaders.
“Getting to know people and giving people the opportunity to succeed is important, so we’re going to be doing a lot of watching, listening, learning and getting up to speed over the next year,” Harris told The Post shortly before the NFL’s team owners ratified the sale last July.
The jobs of virtually all employees, including Wright, were considered up for review following the ownership group’s first season.
With the Commanders’ support — a signal that a change at the top of the team’s front office hierarchy likely was imminent — Wright interviewed to be the Green Bay Packers’ chairman, president and CEO. But the Packers promoted from within and last month named Edward R. Policy, their chief operating officer and general counsel, to succeed Mark Murphy in July 2025 when Murphy retires.
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Wright, a former NFL running back and later a partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, was hired by the Commanders (then called the Washington Football Team) in August 2020, becoming a key figure in trying to transform the franchise. His hire came a month after the team named Julie Donaldson its senior vice president of media and content. She became the first woman to work full time in an NFL team’s game-day radio broadcast booth. (Donaldson transitioned from her executive role with the team last year.)
Wright quickly became a respected voice of the team, but his primary task — to improve the franchise’s workplace — was daunting.
It became even more so shortly after he arrived.
“I knew I was walking into a — we’ll call it a ‘situation in transition,’” Wright told The Post in the spring of 2021. “That’s a diplomatic way to talk about it. And I knew that it was going to be filled with challenges. I guess what I discovered is that they were different challenges than I expected. Nothing was exactly how I expected it to be.”
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The team hired a new coach, Ron Rivera, at the start of 2020, then dropped its controversial 87-year-old Redskins name after facing pressure from sponsors. The franchise commissioned an investigation (which the NFL later took over) into its workplace after The Post detailed allegations of widespread sexual harassment and verbal abuse — just in time for the NFL’s coronavirus-marred 2020 season.
Nine days after the announcement of Wright’s hire, The Post reported that the team also had produced lewd videos from cheerleaders’ swimsuit calendar shoots more than a decade earlier. The allegations, along with subsequent claims of financial improprieties and sexual misconduct by Snyder (which he denied), led to multiple investigations by the NFL, Congress and attorneys general in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. (All three have since reached settlements with the team over allegations of deposits by ticket holders being improperly withheld.)
The team’s head athletic trainer was investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for illegally distributing controlled substances to players and was suspended indefinitely from working with any NFL team. All the while, an intense dispute among Snyder and his limited partners spilled into courts.
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Amid the turmoil, Wright became central to the team’s assertion that the culture within the franchise had changed. In a July 2022 statement to The Post, a spokesperson for Snyder cited “the successful efforts by both Dan and Tanya Snyder, together with Jason Wright and Coach Ron Rivera, for over the past two years to bring about a remarkable transformation to the organization.” The spokesperson said the Snyders would “continue to focus on their league-leading fight to bring greater respect and much-needed diversity and equality to the workplace.”
In his early months, Wright turned over the business operations by hiring a management team of mostly outsiders — executives with expansive resumes but little or no NFL experience. Results were mixed.
Wright and his executive team guided the rebranding to Commanders, a name still panned by most D.C. area sports fans. Some said the name, along with the uniform changes and botched attempts to honor Sean Taylor, showed the lack of institutional knowledge among Wright’s team. But the personnel changes created diversity in the organization’s leadership ranks. His original front office, which featured minorities or women in more than 50 percent of the roles, now has turned over almost entirely.
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Wright attempted to restore a season ticket holder base that had dwindled over the years. He tried to build up a group of corporate partners that had frayed with practically each new revelation of another scandal. He also oversaw another attempt to secure a new stadium site, which ultimately fizzled before the sale to Harris renewed conversations.
The Commanders’ combined revenue for ticket and suite sales is up more than 40 percent and the team led the league in new club seats sold year over year, according to a person familiar with the situation. The team also announced six new corporate partners before the start of last season, with others that followed, and embarked on $75 million worth of improvements to its stadium and practice facility.
“I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished over the past four years,” Wright said in his statement to The Post. “Together with an amazing team of professionals, we have taken this franchise through a period of immense challenge and uncertainty and have transformed it. We’ve set the table for an incredibly bright future under Josh’s leadership. … In particular, I look forward to helping the organization complete its new stadium deal.”
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But while the Commanders began to add new business partners, their most significant one cut ties late last year. The shipping giant FedEx ended its stadium naming rights deal two years before it was set to expire in 2026 by exercising an opt-out provision stemming from the sale of the team. The move deprived the Commanders of the roughly $15 million of remaining revenue on the deal and left them in search of a new partner for their Landover stadium while they search for a new home in D.C., Maryland or Virginia.
The Commanders are working with Elevate, a consulting firm led by San Francisco 49ers team president Al Guido, to find their next naming-rights partner. It’s possible that the team will land a short-term sponsor to carry it through the life of the Landover stadium. The preferred option, however, is to find one that will sign on now and have the name carry over to the next stadium.
When the Commanders’ 2023 season concluded, attention quickly shifted to revamping the team’s on-field product. Peters has changed the front office, altered the Commanders’ scouting department and, with Quinn’s help, overhauled the roster to bring in more than two dozen veteran players and nine drafted rookies, including prized quarterback Jayden Daniels.
The plan, according to a person with knowledge of ownership’s thinking, is to go further with the changes. The owners’ attention ultimately will turn to the business side of the franchise, and that process begins in earnest now.
