When it comes to the sudden news that Washington safety Sean Taylor’s jersey will be retired on Sunday, two possible explanations apply to the timing of the announcement, which was made only three days before the event.
One, the team set things up well in advance and deliberately chose, for whatever reason, to delay the announcement until roughly 72 hours before the game. Two, the team hastily arranged for the Sean Taylor jersey retirement as a distraction from the withering criticism arising from the persistent failure to disclose 650,000 emails from a workplace misconduct investigation that already have been weaponized against Jon Gruden and Jeff Pash.
Sean Taylor’s brother, Gabe, told 106.7 The Fan on Friday that he found out about the event roughly four days earlier. The tweets from 106.7 The Fan don’t address whether the rest of the family received such short notice, but the short notice received by Gabe Taylor suggests that this isn’t something that was in the works for weeks and weeks.
The simplest explanation is that this was thrown together quickly. The idea that the team would decide to retire Taylor’s jersey and hide that information makes no sense, because this is the kind of thing that will sell more tickets. Common sense suggests that the announcement would have been made a long time ago. Common sense suggests that, given the late notice, the event was slapped together quickly. Common sense suggests that, indeed, it was and is a bright shiny object at a time when the franchise is reeling from the renewed focus on its longstanding culture of workplace misconduct.
As our friend Big Cat likes to say, dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things. Despite the many positive changes made to the organization in the past 20 months, plenty of dysfunction lingers. And it’s still trickling down from the very top.