Ron Rivera is as good at coaching football as he is at left-wing, grandstanding political overtures. In both instances, the hype fails to meet the expectations of the final product. From his awful game-day decisions and coaching performance to his commentary on gun ownership and his decision to fine his assistant coach for speaking out against the 2020 riots, Rivera is all show and no go.
But football is what pays his bills. Rivera, a Berkeley grad, should spend more time trying to be a better coach and less trying to turn himself into a left-wing cultural hero. His Washington Redsk — um, Football Tea — um, “Commanders” lost on Sunday to the Philadelphia Eagles. The team looked overmatched and unprepared. Rivera also cost his team by failing to throw a challenge flag in time — a miscue that would have nullified a big play by the Eagles and changed the game’s momentum.
That snag was indicative of many of Rivera’s shortcomings, which have amounted to a mediocre coaching career. Although he does hold an overall winning record as a head coach (91 wins, 84 losses, and 1 tie), he has had only three winning seasons in 11 as a coach. Those all came during his stint with the Carolina Panthers. Currently, his team is 1-2 and last place in the NFC East, and it is most likely looking forward to another losing season.
Most recently, Rivera bemoaned the gun violence pandemic in the country after one of his players, running back Brian Robinson, was shot in Washington. The real issue was the malicious act of a criminal carjacker and a lawless atmosphere in the district, but Rivera blamed the incident on gun owners.
“This continues to be a nationwide epidemic, gun violence. We have to get to a point where we talk about gun safety,” Rivera said at the time. “It’s about education,” he went on to say, as if the carjacker was somehow just uninformed about the capabilities of the lethal weapon he was using. “If you’re going to own a handgun, it’s about knowing how to properly secure it, so it doesn’t get stolen or so the wrong people don’t use it and do this.”
It was the latest of Rivera’s many missteps while talking politics. Earlier, he fined assistant coach Jack Del Rio $100,000 for a tweet in which he compared the Jan. 6 riots to the riots from 2020. At the time, Rivera said he fined him because it was a “distraction” for the team. While explaining the fine, Rivera offered a word salad about how he believed “very strongly in the First Amendment and free speech.”
Like many of Rivera’s failed schemes on the football field, this explanation made little sense. Apparently, free speech is only permitted under Rivera if it’s “not a distraction” — which is to say, he has to agree with the opinion being expressed, or else, it’s a no-go. Obviously, both of his comments about guns and his decision to fine Del Rio were distractions.
Rivera’s coaching is just like his political takes: subpar. He’s allowed to have his opinions, but he is a lazy and sloppy thinker, abusive of his subordinates’ rights, and not good at what he does. Expect to see him on the losing side of things more often than not as this shapes up to be the ninth losing season of his career.
