Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles incorrectly referred to Week 1 opponents Washington as the ‘Redskins’ this week – four years after the team was forced to drop the moniker amid controversy.
Bowles and Tampa Bay are set to welcome the Washington Commanders to Raymond James Stadium for their opening game of the 2024 NFL season this Sunday.
The Bucs will have their work cut out against a Commanders side boasting one of the most promising rookies in the league in quarterback Jayden Daniels, who was selected with the second overall pick at this year’s NFL Draft.
Yet when asked how they are preparing to face Daniels, Bowles dropped a huge gaffe after accidentally calling Washington the ‘Redskins’; a moniker they dropped back in 2020 after Native American groups claimed it was racist.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles incorrectly referred to Week 1 opponents Washington as the ‘Redskins’
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‘I think if you find yourself just facing a rookie quarterback, the other 10 guys are going to kill you. So we’re facing the Redskins, we’re not facing Jayden Daniels,’ the Bucs coach said.
‘They’ve got 10 other guys that we’ve got to worry about as well, so we don’t look at it as facing the rookie quarterback, we’re trying to beat the Redskins.’
Washington had previously been known as the Redskins dating back to its inception in Boston in 1933, only to drop the name amid pressure from groups who branded it ‘racially insensitive’.
The term’s origin is disputed, according to a 2016 Washington Post article, that claims it was first used as a pejorative as early as 1863 in Minnesota.
The article quoted an announcement in The Winona Daily Republican from that year which read: ‘The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.’
By 1898, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary began defining ‘redskin’ with the phrase ‘often contemptuous.’
Washington was forced to drop its ‘Redskins’ moniker back in 2020 after Native American groups claimed it was racist
They rebranded as the ‘Commanders’ two years later, a move which also divided opinion
A 2016 Washington Post poll found that 90 percent of 504 Native American respondents were ‘not bothered’ by the team name. Co-owner Dan Snyder initially wrote an open letter defending his decision to keep the moniker by citing the study.
However, that survey and other similar studies were slammed by journalists and social scientists as being unreliable.
‘The reporters and editors behind this story must have known that it would be used as justification for the continued use of these harmful, racist mascots,’ read a statement from the Native American Journalists Association. ‘They were either willfully malicious or dangerously naïve in the process and reporting used in this story, and neither is acceptable from any journalistic institution.’
In March of 2020, UC Berkeley revealed a study that found that more than half of its 1,000 Native American respondents were offended by the team name.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that a trademark law barring disparaging terms infringes on free speech rights. Prior to that, the United States Patent and Trademark office had tried to revoke the Redskins’ trademark because it was a racial epithet.
Two years after dropping the ‘Redskins’ moniker, Washington confirmed their rebranding as the ‘Commanders’ – a move which also drew plenty of criticism.
They had spent the two-year gap being referred to simply as the generic ‘Football Team’.
One wrote about the name change on X: ‘Give credit to Washington, The Commanders is definitely the name of a group that would hate The Redskins.’
Another disgruntled fan added: ‘No, I’m not blown away by the Commanders, but let’s be honest, this is America in 2022. People were going to hate whatever name Washington picked because that’s what people do.’
