Wright will assume the title of senior advisor while retaining his responsibilities as the team’s de facto president, primarily focused on the search for a new stadium location and naming rights partner for the stadium. Harris and Tad Brown, CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, will lead the search for the Commanders’ next president.
“This feels like the right time for me to explore my next leadership opportunity,” Wright said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “I am immensely grateful to my Commanders colleagues, our fans and this community for all we have accomplished over the past four years, and I look forward to beginning a very successful season for the Burgundy and Gold.”
Wright — whose previous contract was set to expire next month, according to two people with knowledge of the terms — met with members of the team’s business staff Thursday afternoon to inform them of his impending departure. Should he find a new job before the end of the season, the team will support an expedited departure for him, a person familiar with the Commanders’ planning said.
“Jason has had 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 has set the stage for everything to come. I am immensely grateful to Jason for his partnership with 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 shakeup amid a franchise-wide overhaul of operations under Harris, who bought the team last year from Daniel Snyder for a record $6.05 billion. Since the start of the year, the Commanders have hired Adam Peters as general manager and Dan Quinn as coach, revamped their front office and coaching staff and reshuffled the roster.
Such sweeping changes weren’t feasible for the 2023 season when Harris and his group took over last summer; their purchase was finalized just before the start of training camp. Harris’ first year with the Commanders has largely been devoted to evaluating the franchise’s operations while making incremental improvements and rebuilding relationships with alumni and community leaders.
“I think it’s important to get to know people and give them the opportunity to be successful, so we’re going to be watching, listening, learning and getting up to speed over the next year,” Harris told The Post shortly before the NFL team’s owners finalized the sale last July.
The jobs of virtually all employees, including Wright, were put up for review after the ownership group’s first season.
With the Commanders’ support — a signal that a shakeup at the top of the team’s front office hierarchy was likely imminent — Wright ran for chairman, president and CEO of the Green Bay Packers. But the Packers promoted from within, last month naming Edward R. Policy, their chief operating officer and general counsel, to succeed Mark Murphy when Murphy retires in July 2025.
Wright, a former NFL running back and later a partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Company, was hired by the Commanders (then the Washington Football Team) in August 2020 and became a key figure in the effort to transform the franchise. His appointment came a month after the team named Julie Donaldson senior vice president of media and content, becoming the first woman to work full-time in an NFL team’s radio broadcast booth during games. (Donaldson stepped down from her executive role with the team last year.)
Wright quickly became a respected voice for the team, but his main task – improving the franchise’s workplace – was daunting.
Shortly after his arrival, things got worse.
“I knew I was going into a — we call it a ‘transition situation,’” Wright told The Post in the spring of 2021. “That’s a diplomatic way of talking about it. And I knew it was going to be full of challenges. I think what I found was that they were different challenges than I expected. Nothing was exactly as I expected.”
The team hired a new head coach, Ron Rivera, in early 2020, then dropped the controversial 87-year-old Redskins name after sponsors pressured them. The franchise launched an investigation (later taken over by the NFL) into its workplace after The Post published detailed allegations of widespread sexual harassment and verbal abuse — just in time for the coronavirus-ravaged 2020 NFL season.
Nine days after Wright’s hiring was announced, The Post reported that the team had also produced lewd videos from cheerleaders’ swimsuit calendar shoots more than a decade earlier. The allegations, along with subsequent claims of financial impropriety 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 that they improperly withheld deposits from ticket holders.)
The team’s head coach was investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for illegally providing controlled substances to players and was indefinitely suspended from working with any NFL team. Meanwhile, a heated dispute between Snyder and his limited partners led to lawsuits.
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 of both Dan and Tanya Snyder, along with Jason Wright and Coach Ron Rivera, over the past two years to bring about a remarkable transformation of the organization.” The spokesperson said the Snyders would “remain focused on their league-leading fight to bring greater respect and much-needed diversity and equality to the workplace.”
In his first months, Wright turned the company’s operations around by hiring a management team composed largely of outsiders: executives with extensive resumes but little or no NFL experience. The results were mixed.
Wright and his executive team led the rebranding to the Commanders, a name still decried by most sports fans in the D.C. area. Some said the name, along with the uniform changes and failed attempts to honor the late Sean Taylor, showed a lack of institutional knowledge within Wright’s team. But the personnel changes have helped diversify the organization’s leadership ranks. Wright’s original front office, which had minorities or women in more than 50 percent of the roles, has now been almost entirely replaced.
Wright tried to rebuild a season-ticket holder base that had dwindled over the years. He tried to rebuild a group of business partners that had frayed with almost every new scandal revealed. He also oversaw another attempt to secure a new stadium location that ultimately fizzled before the sale to Harris resumed talks.
The Commanders’ combined revenue from 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 matter. The team also announced six new corporate partners before the start of last season, with others to follow, and began $75 million in improvements to its stadium and training 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 a tremendous team of professionals, we have led this franchise through a period of immense challenge and uncertainty and have transformed it, setting the table for an incredibly bright future under Josh’s leadership. … I am especially looking forward to helping the organization complete the new stadium deal.”
But while the Commanders began adding new business partners, their most important one severed ties with the team late last year. Shipping giant FedEx terminated its stadium naming rights agreement two years before it was set to expire in 2026, exercising an opt-out provision that came with the team’s sale. The move left the Commanders with about $15 million of remaining revenue from the deal and left them scrambling to find 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 the team could find a short-term sponsor to help guide the team through the life of Landover Stadium, but the preferred option is to find one that will sign on now and pass the name on to the next stadium.
As the Commanders’ 2023 season drew to a close, attention quickly shifted to revamping the team’s on-field product. Peters has overhauled the front office, overhauled the Commanders’ scouting department and, with help from Quinn, 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 the owner’s thinking, is to continue with the changes. The owners’ attention will eventually turn to the business side of the franchise, and that process is beginning in earnest.