The Washington name delay is awkward, but give credit for a rare show of patience

This can take years, but Daniel Snyder initially indicated he wanted to rush it in a few weeks, mostly with the assistance of Ron Rivera, the new coach. Now the team can relax a little, get through the 2020 season (challenging enough in the time of the novel coronavirus) and commit to a true re-branding process that it promises will include “player, alumni, fan, community and sponsor input.”

Snyder’s status as majority owner doesn’t appear to be in jeopardy, and for that he should have overflowing gratitude for the morally loose brotherhood that reigns among the NFL’s 32 franchises, an exclusive group that protects its desire to answer to no one. However, his standing as an indomitable king is more vulnerable than it has ever been. For the first time, Snyder needs to earn some reward points from the public, and this may be a sign that he wants to be perceived as taking that challenge seriously.

But let’s not give him too strong a pat on the back. Doing the right thing and having a strategic approach shouldn’t be as complicated as Snyder makes them. He still needed 21 years, a staggering level of American turmoil and pressure that could have decimated his business before he was compelled to change the name. The team announced a review July 3 and came back 10 days later to say it would “retire” its name, all the while leaving a sense, as Rivera stated in an interview, that it would deliver a re-branding shockingly quickly, before the new season began. Now, 10 more days later, it succumbed to the enormity of this undertaking.

Or it danced a mischievous jig to manipulate the news cycle because it felt the need to try to douse a damning story.

No matter how you look at it, Snyder comes across as, well, Snyder. Either he stumbled into the understanding that a quick name fix was too ambitious — which is astonishingly unsophisticated for the primary owner of an asset Forbes valued at $3.4 billion — or he thought that something as inconsequential as a sports franchise’s name could diminish the impact of something as revolting as a sports franchise’s toxicity. Which is astonishingly unsophisticated, too.

Still, an opportunity remains. Snyder isn’t the kind to read a room well, and because of that he has received a lot of deserved criticism. But now time exists to make the re-branding an inclusive effort rather than a directive shouted down from the mountaintop.

It’s really hard to name a team, especially an existing one. It’s not like much glory will occur under this temporary Washington Football Team designation anyway. Rivera is in Year 1 of a rebuild, and the coronavirus turned the entire offseason into a bunch of video chats. If ever there is a good time to play a season with “Coming Soon” painted across your brand, this is it because it is destined to be a forgotten year. A 6-10 record would be reason to celebrate.

Washington Football Team is bland, safe, unoriginal. And that’s the point. It’s just a sheet of plastic to cover a broken window for a little while. The name makes me think of college football and the Huskies. It doesn’t make me cringe, however, and strange as it may seem, that’s progress.

Speaking of Washington state, it named its new NHL team Thursday: the Seattle Kraken. And it seems to be a hit and not because people feel a strong connection to a mythical sea monster. The expansion franchise spent nearly two years being diligent and collaborative in its rollout. It came up with a cool logo and color scheme. Best of all, it made the experience festive and explained its reasoning in a thorough and clear manner that fans could respect.

So at least one Washington named a team and did it appropriately. The other, which is different because it has a long history to consider, wisely extended its clock. That proposition is much more promising than the way Rivera initially presented the desire for a quick fix: “We came up with a couple of names — two of them I really like.”

Give Terry Bateman, the Snyder adviser who is officially the team’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer now, the time to craft an approach that could generate excitement. Give fans the time to rinse away the aftertaste of a name that stood for almost 90 years. Give the organization time to re-create itself again after another scandal.

This way, there is some semblance of hope to funnel toward the future. The present is too acidic for any good vibes.