Ron Rivera wielded more power than his Commanders successor will possess within the organization. The since-fired head coach spent much of his time in Washington running the show; the team’s next HC will not.
The Commanders are planning to give their newly hired president of football operations, Adam Peters, the keys. Their to-be-determined head coach will report to Peters, according to SI.com’s Albert Breer. This will be a shift for the franchise, who gave Rivera personnel power during the final Dan Snyder years.
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While Peters follows Martin Mayhew as a Washington GM being hired from San Francisco, John Lynch‘s longtime lieutenant will be a more empowered figure with the NFC East franchise. After Washington spent 2020 without a GM, Rivera signed off on the Mayhew addition in 2021. While Mayhew held considerable power, Rivera was ultimately in charge. The dismissed HC has since said this setup is not ideal, and new owner Josh Harris had long been expected to bring forth a shift. Following Mayhew and Ran Carthon, Peters is the third Lynch-era 49ers exec to land a GM gig.
Some teams have both their head coach and GM report to ownership separately, while others use the owner-GM-HC workflow model. After rumblings of Harris seeking an organizational restructure, the Commanders can now be slotted in the latter category. Regarding this Peters-fronted restructuring, the new front office boss will evaluate the team’s personnel setup. This evaluation, however, will not include Commanders president Jason Wright, per Front Office Sports’ AJ Perez. Wright’s work will fall outside of Peters’ purview. Snyder hired Wright to head up the team’s business side in 2020.
Peters will have authority to determine the roles of Mayhew and VP of player personnel Marty Hurney. Both of these execs have been rumored to be on the outs, but no firings are known to have transpired yet. Peters and Mayhew worked together for nearly four years in San Francisco. The Peters hire, rather than the organization going with its other finalist (Bears assistant GM Ian Cunningham), would seem to point to Mayhew staying in a different capacity.
Peters, who turned down the chance to interview for the Cardinals and Titans’ GM jobs last year, always loomed as a logical candidate. But he officially became a Commanders target in December, when former Golden State Warriors GM Bob Myers — brought in by Harris as an advisor during this transition — asked ex-Vikings GM Rick Spielman if he would also help out, Breer adds. These two did prep work beginning around Week 16, with Harris wanting good background in the event he fired Rivera. Spielman came up with a 15-person list for the football ops job, and he and Myers whittled it down to the Peters-Cunningham contingent.
Spielman, whom the Vikings fired following the 2021 season, did not tell anyone who he was working for during this research effort, per Breer. The first round of interviews occurred at Harris’ Miami office. Co-owners Magic Johnson, Mitchell Rales and David Blitzer also spent extensive time with the candidates, with Breer adding the latter trio offered Harris input that led to the Peters decision. We will soon see how the Spielman- and Myers-led research effort turns out on the coaching front.
I’m convinced that less bureaucracy is always the right choice if you want an organization to be effective. Unfortunately most executives are more concerned with having a fall guy they can throw under the bus than being accountable which results in wasteful bloat within an organization.