1932-1945
George Preston Marshall, the owner of a major laundry chain, headed a four-man syndicate that bought an NFL franchise in 1932. Reportedly, they wanted to locate their team in New York but were blocked by the league's territorial rule, so they settled for Boston.
The team was originally called the Braves because it spent its first season playing home games in Braves Field, the home of the National League baseball team. After taking a loss of $46,000, the other three investors dropped out, leaving Marshall as the sole owner. He promptly moved to Boston's other major league field, Fenway Park, and renamed his team the Redskins.
In 1936, Marshall hired former New York Giant end Ray Flaherty as his head coach. That was the beginning of a 10-year span during which the Redskins were consistently among the top four teams in the NFL, with the Bears, Giants, and Packers. Over that stretch, they won six Eastern Division titles and two NFL championships.
Their first Eastern Division title came in Flaherty's first season. But fewer than 8,000 fans for the team's final home game and Marshall decided not to play the championship game in Boston. He moved it to the Polo Grounds in New York, where the Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers, 21-6. The following year, Marshall moved the franchise to Washington, DC.
Marshall, who had briefly been a professional actor, was a showman at heart, as he demonstrated after his team became the Washington Redskins. He organized a marching band, wrote a fight song for the team, and staged halftime shows, all NFL firsts. When the Redskins signed "Slinging Sammy" Baugh, the great passer out of Texas Christian, in 1937, Marshall made him dress in full cowboy regalia for a press conference, even though was a city boy who had never been on a horse.
Of course, Baugh was much more than a publicity stunt. He was not only a great passer, but a great punter, an excellent defensive back, and a pretty good runner. In his rookie year, he led the Redskins to the Eastern Division championship and into the NFL championship game against the Chicago Bears.
The Bears took a 21-14 lead in the third quarter, but Baugh immediately threw a 78-yard touchdown pass to Wayne Millner to tie the score and, on the next possession, he hit Ed Justice with a 35-yarder to put the Redskins ahead for good.
After two second-place finishes, the Redskins won the division in 1940 and again faced the Bears for the championship. The result was the most lopsided game in NFL history, regular season or playoffs. The Bears scored on the second play from scrimmage and went on to win, 73-0.
After slipping all the way into third place in 1941, the Redskins reclaimed the Eastern titlewith a sparkling 10-1 record in 1942. For the third time in six years, they were matched against the Bears in the NFL championship game. And, for the second time, the Redskins won. The Bears took an early 6-0 lead on a 52-yard return of a fumble, but Baugh's 39-yard touchdown pass to Wilbur Moore put Washington ahead for good and a 1-yard run by Andy Farkas made the final score 14-6.
Ray Flaherty went into the service early in 1943 and was replaced by Dutch Bergman, who guided the Redskins to another division title, Again, the Bears were their opponents in the championship game. Baugh missed most of the first half and a good part of the third quarter with a concussion. By the time he returned to the game, the Bears had a 27-7 lead. He threw for a TD to make it closer, but the Bears scored two more touchdowns in the fourth period and won, 41-21.
In 1945, the Redskins played for the championship again. This time, the Cleveland Rams were their opponents on a cold, windy day in Cleveland. It was a strange game. In the first quarter, Baugh's pass from his own endzone was blown into a goalpost, resulting in a safety under the rules of the time. (Today, it would simply be an incomplete pass.) A short time later, Baugh was taken out of the game with bruised ribs and he returned for only a few plays in the second half.
Nevertheless, Washington took a 7-2 lead, only to see Cleveland come back with a Bob Waterfield touchdown pass. Then Waterfield attempted the extra point; it hit the cross bar, popped into the air, and dropped over to make the score 9-7. Waterfield threw for another TD in the third quarter but missed the extra point. The Redskins then scored again to cut the deficit to 15-14. Late in the fourth quarter, Joe Aguirre tried a 31-yard field goal that would have won the game, but the win blew it just wide.
1946-1992
Then came a long drought. From 1946 through 1968, the Redskins had seven coaches and only three winning seasons. But some interesting things happened during that span. In 1950, the Redskins became the first NFL team to have all their games on TV, and in 1961 they began playing in new D. C. Stadium, built and operated by the federal government. The Kennedy administration, however, threatened to throw them out if the team wasn't integrated by the 1962 season. The Redskins drafted Syracuse halfback Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman Trophy winner, that year and traded him to the Cleveland Browns for running back Bobby Mitchell, who was also black. Mitchell was moved to flanker and became one of the team's stars. The Redskins were the last team in the NFL to integrate their roster.
By then, George Preston Marshall was descending into illness. He had been selling stock in the team, but he was still the majority owner with 52 percent. In December of 1963, he agreed to the appointment of three other stockholders as conservators of his estate. One of the three, Leo DeOrsey, became the president of Pro Football, Inc., the corporation that actually owned the Redskins. DeOrsey died in 1965 and was replaced by noted attorney Edward Bennett Williams.
Marshall died in August of 1969 and his estate was immediately plunged into litigation because he had, in effect, disinherited his two children. It was finally settled in 1974, when Jack Kent Cooke became the majority owner, but with Williams operating the team as his trustee.
In the meantime, things had begun to look for the Redskins with the hiring, in 1969, of Vince Lombardi as head coach and general manager. In his one year with Washington, the team improved to a 7-5-2 record, its best since 1955. However, Lombardi died of cancer in September of 1970 and the team fell back to a 6-8 record and a fourth-place finish that year.
Then George Allen arrived. In his first season, the Redskins went 9-4-1, winning more games than any Washington team since 1942. It was good only for second place in the East, but in 1972 the Redskins won 10 games and the NFC East title. After beating the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys to win the conference championship, they lost to the Miami Dolphins, 14-7, in the Super Bowl. (That, of course, was the Miami team that went undefeated through the season and the playoffs.)
During the next five years, the Redskins were always in contention, but they never won another playoff game under Allen. He was replaced by Jack Pardee in 1978, but Pardee lasted only three seasons.
Jack Kent Cooke took over from Williams as team president in 1980. In January of the following year, he hired Joe Gibbs, who had been offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers. It was an inspired choice.
In 12 seasons, Gibbs guided the Redskins to a 140-65-0 record, eight playoff appearances, five NFC East championships, and three Super Bowl victories. Remarkably, the team had three different starting quarterbacks in its Super Bowl wins.
Known mainly as an architect of the one-back offense, Gibbs turned out to be a supreme motivator who could genuinely mold players into a team. His offense was based on a very big line blocking for a running back who was also usually pretty good-sized, interspersed with passes to a corps of mostly small receivers. The Washington corps was nicknamed the Smurfs, while the big line was collectively known as the Hogs.
The first came in Super Bowl XVII after the 1982 season, only Gibbs' second. After winning their first three playoff games convincingly, outscoring their opponents 83-31, the Redskins faced the Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl for the second time. They trailed 17-13 early in the fourth quarter, facing fourth and inches at the Miami 43. Gibbs decided to go for it with John Riggins, who burst through a hole, ran over a Dolphin defensive back, and went all the way for a touchdown. A few minutes later, quarterback Joe Theismann threw a short TD pass to Charlie Brown, one of the Smurfs, setting the final score at 27-17.
The Redskins got to the Super Bowl again the following year, but they lost to the Oakland Raiders, 38-9. After losing to the Bears in the divisional playoffs in 1984, they missed the playoffs entirely in 1985, then reached the 1986 NFC championship game, only to lose to the New York Giants, who went on to win the Super Bowl.
The team struggled with injuries for much of the 1987 season, and Doug Williams finally replaced an ineffective Jay Schroeder at quarterback late in the season. Playing in a weak division, the Redskins compiled an 11-4 record but weren't highly regarded entering the playoffs. Even after they beat the Bears and Vikings to get into the Super Bowl, they were 3 1/2-point underdogs to the Denver Broncos.
Denver jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first quarter, but the Redskins then embarked on a record-setting second quarter in which they scored 35 points to put the game out of reach. Williams, the first black quarterback to start a Super Bowl, set records with 228 yards and four touchdowns passing in the quarter. Timmy Smith set a record with 204 rushing yards for the game, Rickey Sanders set another with 193 receiving yards, and Williams' 340 passing yards was a third Super Bowl record for the team.
After missing the playoffs entirely for the next two years, the Redskins made it as a wildcard in 1990, when they won in the first round but were eliminated by the San Francisco 49ers in a divisional playoff game. But in 1991 they put up a 14-2 record to lead the NFC East and had two easy playoff wins, 24-7 over Atlanta and 41-10 over Detroit, to reach the Super Bowl for the fourth time under Gibbs.
This time, they were facing the Buffalo Bills, losers in the previous two Super Bowls. The Redskins blew three scoring chances in the first quarter, but it didn't matter much. Mark Rypien, who had come out of nowhere to be named the NFC's starting quarterback in the Pro Bowl, threw a 41-yard pass to Ricky Sanders on the second play of the next period to set up a field goal that put Washington ahead for good. They scored two more touchdowns in the quarter to take a 17-0 lead. Then they intercepted Jim Kelly on the first play of the second half and quickly scored again, effectively putting the game out of reach. The final score was 37-24.
The 'Skins finished only third in the division in 1992, but still got into the playoffs as a wild card. After beating the Minnesota Vikings in the first round, they lost to the San Francisco 49ers and Gibbs then announced his retirement from coaching. He was replaced by his defensive coordinator, Richie Petitbon, who lasted only one year.
1993-2004
The Redskins then decided to go with another offensive coordinator, Norv Turner, from the Dallas Cowboys. Turner was unable to produce a consistent winner, though. The Redskins did lead the division with a 10-6 record in 1999, when they won a first-round playoff game but were eliminated by Tampa Bay in the second round.
Meanwhile, the team had acquired both a new owner and a new stadium. Jack Kent Cooke had begun looking for a new place to play in 1988. Finally, in 1996, he bought some farmland in Landover, Maryland, and signed a contract to build a 78,6000-seat stadium there. He named the location Raljon after his two sons, Ralph (who had died in 1995 at the age of 58) and John Kent Cooke Jr.
Cooke died in April of 1997. At his memorial service, John Kent Jr. announced that the stadium would be named after his father. The Redskins played their first regular season game there on Sept. 14.
In 1999, the Cooke estate sold the team to Daniel M. Snyder for $800 million, a record at the time for an American sports franchise. In November of that year, the stadium was renamed FedEx Field in a naming rights deal.
Snyder fired Norv Turner with three games remaining in the 2000 season and Terry Robiskie became interim coach. Then Marty Schottenheimer signed a four-year, $10 million contract to become head coach. But the Redskins went only 8-8 in 2001 and Schottenheimer was fired because Steve Spurrier had suddenly become available.
Spurrier, the 1962 Heisman Trophy winner, had won 122 games and a national championship in 12 years at the University of Florida. Snyder had tried to sign a year earlier, but had finally seettled on Schottenheimer. Shortly after his Florida team won the Orange Bowl, Spurrier announced that he was resigning to look for an NFL coaching job, and Snyder jumped at the chance to land him.
But Spurrier lasted just two seasons and resigned after going 12-20 during that stretch. On Jan. 7, 2004, came the surprising news that Joe Gibbs was returning to the Redskins after 11 years out of football. During that time, he had become a very successful NASCAR owner. His return was welcomed by most Redskins fans, but NFL observers wondered whether Gibbs would be able to adjust to the changes that had taken in the place in the league during his absence.
Shortly before Gibbs was signed, the Redskins won a federal court case over the team trademark. In 1999, a panel of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office stripped the franchise of trademark protection on the grounds that the nickname and the Indian head logo was disparaging to Native Americans. That decision was overturned by a U. S. District Court judge in September of 2003.