Redskins Park

Making an old house a new home.

- Brian McNally

The scene is striking. An NFL locker room that was once dark and decrepit received a makeover at Redskins Park this summer.

Now players don’t want to leave. Lockers are new and inviting. Gone are the tiny metal folding chairs, the bane of Redskins for years. There is more space for personal belongings and equipment and shoes.

Spread across the brightly lit room are games: A ping-pong table, foosball, shuffleboard. Players crowd around them for hours every day even as reporters descend on the room for interviews. Televisions are more accessible for the 63 players than in the past. It might not be a Taj Mahal. But given where their facilities were as recently as last year – when leather couches were considered a luxurious upgrade – Redskins players are appreciative of the effort.

Instead of spending all their free time in the training room - or anywhere in the building besides the locker room – Washington’s players now want to hang out. It’s a refreshing change for an organization in the midst of its own on-the-fly makeover on the field, too.

“Before it was not conducive to a professional football team,” said veteran safety Will Blackmon with a laugh.

It’s all part of a strategy to keep players around the facility longer, to allow them to bond in between team meetings and practice. Long days are made more tolerable. Maybe it will even lure a free agent or two to consider Washington when they otherwise might have been swayed by better, newer facilities elsewhere in the NFL.

“I don’t know how much it’s gonna help in free agency,” kicker Dustin Hopkins said. “I would hope it would. Who knows? But I think ultimately what it does do for sure is you’re able to bond with people that you might not have otherwise bonded with.”