New Commanders Owner Josh Harris Discusses the Work Ahead
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Josh Harris has long eyed NFL ownership. It’s obviously a big part of why he followed the path Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and Panthers owner David Tepper blazed, in buying a minority share of the Steelers in 2020 before becoming a controlling owner elsewhere. So it’d be pretty hard to characterize his swing-and-miss on the Broncos in ’22 as a win.
But a year later, it sure feels that way for the 58-year-old titan of private equity. And when he and I talked Wednesday night, on the eve of the approval of his group’s $6.05 billion purchase of the Commanders, he wasn’t shy in sharing that.
“It a hundred percent feels like a blessing in disguise,” Harris said, from Minneapolis. “I mean, listen, Denver’s a great franchise, and I’m happy I got to go through that. But at the end of the day, my deep connections to this city are so much stronger. We got a chance to do diligence, and one of the days we went into FedExField and we saw all the legends’ names. And I was with my team that had been with me for the Broncos, I was like, God, you got Art Monk and Darrell Green and Joe Gibbs and John Riggins.
“I’m pointing at all the pictures because of the emotional connections I have. And they’re like, Wow, this is different for you. So it was very lucky. It worked out in a very lucky way for me.”
There are a million reasons why Washington fans partied like they’d won a Super Bowl with the sale of the team being finalized. Most pertain to what’s going out, rather than what’s coming in. The D.C.-Maryland-Virginia corridor that makes up the metro area saw, almost in slow motion, now former owner Dan Snyder ground one of the richest brands in North American team sports into dust and turn a flagship franchise into a punch line.
So there’s no question that the first box Harris checks for Commanders fans is that he’s not Snyder, and understandably so.
Harris has plenty of relevant experience that should help him lead an NFL team.
Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports
But there are reasons beyond that for all of you in D.C. to be fired up for what Harris and his group are going to bring to the table. And Harris and I covered a lot of that over about a half hour last week. The first thing you should know? Well, it’s right there—he is legitimately one of you.
“One of my earliest memories was walking down East Capital Street into RFK, hearing the stomping and looking up at Jack Kent Cooke’s box,” says Harris. “My dad was a huge football fan, and Washington was all about Washington football. We had the Bullets. There was no baseball team. We went down to Memorial Stadium [in Baltimore] because we were big sports fans. The R------- were the dominant force in Washington.
“I remember watching Mike Bass block Garo Yepremian’s kick, and run the football back in 1973 in the championship—[Washington] lost 14–7 to the Dolphins. I was 7 years old. My mom still lives in Washington, and my cousins live in Washington. I grew up there. So just for me personally, it’s a very personal moment that brings me back to my childhood in Chevy Chase.”
As for what else you need to know, here’s a little bit of what I learned in talking to Harris.
Owning the Sixers and Devils has prepared him for this. Usually, there are hard-to-avoid traps lurking for billionaires buying sports franchises. And Harris knows it, because he had to confront those both as an NBA owner and an NHL owner, and as he sees it that experience should better equip him not to let such situations lead his team into a ditch.
“Certainly, I think a lot of people who are great businesspeople, or are great at something else, come in to owning sports teams, they believe just because they’re smart and they’re knowledgeable fans that they can start making player decisions, and they make mistakes,” he says. “My learning on that side has been to attract and retain the best possible, in this case, football talent, and to watch, to learn, to listen. To not come in and just think because you’re a great fan you know what’s going on.
“That’s what we intend to do. I think the other thing that people don’t realize, unless they’ve been through it, business is very transactional—it’s about building value, building a company. In sports, you’re a steward for a city, and it’s very emotional. It’s not about money. It’s about much more intangible things.”
There is something to be taken from The Process with the Sixers. Two things, actually. The first, as I see it, is that Harris will think outside the box. The second is that there’ll be a strong focus on building something sustainable that’s not just for the here and now (going heavy win-now was actually the first pothole Snyder stepped into in D.C.).
“There’s a big arbitrage in sports on thinking and acting for the long term, and we want to build elite organizations and teams that win consistently over the long run,” Harris says. “Every situation is different. Washington has a good, young team, so I’m not sure that’s the right analogy. But yes, we want to be innovative. We want to encourage long-term decision-making. Look, ultimately, you win with the players on the field, you draft them, you get them in free agency, you trade for them.
“Unfortunately, free agency is generally something where you pay a lot, trades are very opportunistic, so the draft is what you ultimately have to fall back on to build your team over a long run. And we’ll just have to see what we have here. I’m not saying that’s what we’re going to do, but I think that we’ll do what we have, which is about attracting the best and brightest, thinking outside the box and creating edges in sports science and analytics.”
Harris has a lot of catching up to do. And he readily admitted that when I asked how closely he’s followed the Commanders and the NFL at large.
“Growing up, I was a huge football fan,” he says. “I’m getting to know the team again. I’m coming in, it’s the eve of training camp, I’ve had very limited interaction with Ron [Rivera] and his staff, although I’ve had some. I have had no interaction with the players. Really, I know what I read. Obviously, I’m aware of what it means to be the owner of a sports team. I know a lot about Joel Embiid. I know a lot about James Harden. I know a lot about Tyrese Maxey. I know a lot about Nick Nurse. I know a lot about Daryl Morey.
“I don’t have that kind of intimate knowledge of the Washington Commanders—yet. I will.”
That, I think, should be taken as the current guys in charge having a clean slate. Harris said Wednesday that he’d yet to meet GM Martin Mayhew, while he’s had limited exposure to EVP Marty Hurney and Rivera. He’s had more, for obvious reasons, with team president Jason Wright. That gives him, and his team, a lot of catching up to do. But the bar for those guys to be retained will be set where it’s been with his other teams.
“How do you compete in the NFL? You try to create the best team,” Harris says. “What does that mean? It means hiring the best front office, maintaining the best coaching staff, attracting the best people. It means developing analytics, developing any edge you can, whether it be analytics, whether it be sports science, whether it be how you treat the players, whether it be the opposing team not wanting to come into your house because they don’t like it.
“It’s a million little edges. We know how to do it. We’re not gonna meddle in the roster day to day. But obviously there are times where we made changes. You’ve seen it in Philly, saw it in Philly this offseason. We do what we have to do and make decisions we think are right. Right now, we’re gonna do the best we can in learning and getting to know the people.”
And as he told me, for the time being, that’s going to mean using their eyes and ears more than their mouths. Because in a certain way, this happening now, in the summer, gives the new owners a chance to sit back and observe for a while before having to make any sorts of sweeping calls on who’ll coach or run the team.
“It’s being a fly on the wall to a large extent,” Harris says. “I’m not gonna be watching the 40-yard dash and calling plays. It’s about starting to get to know the staff, the key staff and key players, and then understanding the decision-making that’s going into the roster and how they’re configuring the team and going from there. And look, this year is a big year for the franchise obviously, and we’re gonna learn a lot.
“So I think it’s unlikely that you’ll see us, or me, meddling early. We’re going to be watching the results and what happens. Obviously, we know how to build sports franchises that win over the long run. We’ve done it. It takes a while. We have to see what we have.”
I asked Harris at the start of our conversation when this dream of his started to become real, and his answer is probably an indication of his level of confidence and determination to land his hometown team. It wasn’t recent.
“NFL teams come up once in a generation,” he says. So it really got real for me when the process was announced. I’m a man of faith, I’m Jewish, and I would call this bashert. The fact that I was able to end up owning, being part of and stewarding for this city, my hometown franchise, in the NFL, is something I never could’ve imagined in my wildest dreams. I’m humbled. It’s like I’m on some greater mission that I don’t understand.”
Bashert is the Yiddish word for destiny, used to describe things that were meant to be.
So even as he started to think about what he could chip away at now (rebuilding trust with the city, creating a better fan experience at games and getting going on the stadium effort) and the stuff that’ll have to wait (the larger direction of the football operation), Harris did give himself time last week to appreciate all that’s happened over the past year. And yes, that includes how a tough loss last summer set the stage for one of his life’s biggest wins.
After that, the enormity of what’s ahead hit him.
“Look, I’m a middle-class kid from Chevy Chase; this is an exciting day for me,” he says. “But honestly, it’s not about me. It’s about the city and the fans. So I’ll just tell you that I feel an awesome sense of responsibility to deliver. And so as much as this is exciting, I’m having some sleepless nights because I’m thinking already about how I can deliver. I know there’s a lot of hard work coming.”
Indeed, his first training camp as an owner kicks off this week.
