2020 Washington Football Team season
89th season in franchise history
The 2020 season was the Washington Football Team's 89th in the National Football League (NFL) and their first under head coach Ron Rivera. The season also marked the first time since their inaugural season as the Braves in 1932 that the team was not known as the Redskins, as they retired the name and logo during the offseason in the wake of the George Floyd protests, and after decades of controversy. This was also the first season since 2009 without Pro Bowl offensive lineman Trent Williams, who was traded to the San Francisco 49ers on April 25, 2020. It was also the first season since 2008 without Bruce Allen, as he and several other front office members were fired at the end of the 2019 season.
The team improved upon its 3–13 record in 2019 by going 7–9 and winning the NFC East for the first time since 2015. In doing so they became only the third team in NFL history to win a division with a losing record in a full season after the 2010 Seattle Seahawks and 2014 Carolina Panthers, the latter of which Rivera also coached. It would be followed by the 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and 2025 Carolina Panthers. They also became the first team in NFL history to make the playoffs after a 2–7 start. Their season would end with a 31–23 loss to the eventual Super Bowl LV champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round. The season also marked the return of quarterback Alex Smith, who suffered a life-threatening leg injury late in the 2018 season and missed the entire 2019 season.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “2020 Washington Football Team season” as 89th season in franchise history. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 89th season in franchise history. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q80985415. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1932, 2009 and 2008.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “2020 Washington Football Team season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.