While the Washington Football Team continues to deal with the renewed criticism of its workplace misconduct issues as explored during a 10-month investigation, the organization has a new P.R. problem.
The team announced on Thursday morning that, on Sunday, safety Sean Taylor’s No. 21 will be retired. The timing was criticized, either as providing insufficient notice to fans or as creating a distraction from the controversy emanating from 650,000 emails that the NFL has gathered and refuses to release, even as some of them somehow get out.
On Thursday night, team president Jason Wright apologized for the situation, as it relates to the timing of the announcement.
Wright says it was planned for a while, and he acknowledges that it should have been announced earlier.
“We screwed up the execution and, as a result, we realize that we hurt many of our fans deeply,” Wright wrote. “And for that I and we as an organization are sorry.”
The article doesn’t address whether the situation was a deliberate or coincidental shiny object to take attention away from the emails. The article doesn’t address the emails at all.
That’s not a surprise. The team doesn’t want anyone to be talking about it. Even if everyone is talking about it.