It was Thursday, and Commanders coach Ron Rivera was behind his desk, watching tape, when the news got across to him, the same way it got to the rest of the world—through news reports. So Rivera paused the tape (he was watching receivers, and TCU’s Quentin Johnston was on the screen) and gave himself a moment before doing any fact-finding of his own, just as the cellphone sitting nearby on his desk started to blow up.
Word was, finally, the franchise was being sold, with the initial report, from the sports business site , having it going to D.C.-area native Josh Harris for $6 billion.
“I mean, truthfully, for me, it was bittersweet,” Rivera told me, driving home Saturday.
It wasn’t long before the enormity of it sunk in, or, in Rivera’s mind, started to become official, after the Snyders gave word to team president Jason Wright, and Wright then passed the facts along to the team’s coach. And, yes, for Rivera, there’s absolutely a sense of relief in the transaction that everyone’s been waiting to get finalized.
Yet, he used that word:.
On one hand, Rivera was happy for all his players and staff, who had to answer for things that were mostly happening before any of them arrived and, obviously, well out of their control. On the other? Well …
“I know I’ll get bashed for this …” Rivera says, with some resignation.
For Rivera, the multibillion-dollar transaction, celebrated by an entire region, wasn’t as simple as it was for a fan base singing, in unison, “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” or as simple as it was for the women who accused Snyder and his employees of unspeakable things over two decades, or as easy as it will be for a laundry list of coaches and players who went through Snyder’s Ashburn, Va., and left with a terrible taste in their mouth.
All those people had the day they were waiting for Thursday. Rivera was a little more conflicted. So in the moment? He turned the Johnston tape back on and went about his day.
