Rivera: Washington's full rebrand could take 16-18 months

Washington was widely expected to introduce a new name prior to the 2020 season, but the franchise announced Thursday that the club will temporarily go by the Washington Football Team for the upcoming campaign.

Washington head coach Ron Rivera said Friday on "Good Morning Football" that the organization decided there wasn't enough time to properly vet a permanent rebrand before the season began.

"We've had conversations. I've been involved in those conversations," he said, according to Kevin Patra of NFL.com. "What happened was we found the realization that this is about a 16-18-month process. This can't happen instantly. So we've really got to do our homework. We've got to be very thorough with what we're doing going forward because we want to get it right. We want this new name, this new nickname, to be able to stand the test of time - stand for 100 years. We're going to be real busy with that. We've hired a firm that wants to be very diligent with their work; they want to be inclusive with their work."

Washington is removing the Redskins logo from its helmets and replacing it with players' numbers. But the NFC East club appears to be determined to retain its classic burgundy-and-gold color scheme, with Rivera saying Washington doesn't want to "lose" its history.

"The players have reacted very well (to the new uniforms)," Rivera said. "They think the look is very clean. We've kept the traditional colors. We're gonna be burgundy and gold again because there's so much history with this football team, and we don't want to lose that as well. So we're going to keep the colors. But the players like how clean it looks. ... They also like the idea of having numbers on the side of their helmets, and the Alabama players seem to be pretty excited about that."

Rivera is entering his first season in Washington after nine seasons as the head coach of the Carolina Panthers, where he was named Coach of the Year twice and produced a 76-63-1 record.