Redskins’ pres Bruce Allen kept calling Kirk Cousins “Kurt,” team PR blamed his accent

The Washington Redskins’ contract negotiations with quarterback Kirk Cousins didn’t produce a long-term deal, so he’ll remain on the franchise tag this season, and the team hasn’t come out of this looking good. Washington offered Cousins $53 million in fully guaranteed money, which they boasted is “the highest fully guaranteed amount upon signing for a quarterback in NFL history,”  but that’s exactly what he would get in guaranteed money if he just played the next two seasons under the franchise and transition tags before hitting free agency, so there wasn’t really any incentive for him to sign this deal and throw away his leverage. And to make matters worse, team president Bruce Allen (who’s been a key figure on the football operations side too, especially since the bizarre March firing of GM Scot McCloughan) kept calling Cousins “Kurt” while reading a statement on the negotiations, in a video posted to the team website. Here’s a supercut of that from Dan Steinberg of The Washington Post‘s DC Sports Bog:

Please enjoy Bruce Allen calling his franchise quarterback by the wrong first name six times in two minutes pic.twitter.com/BVkahmTeqo

— Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog) July 18, 2017

That’s pretty bad, all right. And when ESPN’s John Keim asked about it, team PR blamed Allen’s accent:

Oh wow @john_keim asked the skins why Allen called Cousins "Kurt." Turns out it's his accent pic.twitter.com/QgZXGNZF8f

— Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog) July 18, 2017

Amazingly, this isn’t the first time a team president has gotten a player’s name wrong in contract negotiations this year. New York Yankees’ president Randy Levine went off on reliever Dellin Betances in contract negotiations in February, but reportedly kept calling him “Dylan” in the arbitration hearing. But the clumsiest thing here might be the “accent” defense from team PR; Allen’s never had issues saying “Kirk” before. The Redskins’ PR team has a long and distinguished history of costly screwups, though, so that’s perhaps par for the course. And who knows, maybe this will be the cue for Kirk to start a State Farm commercial with alter ego “Kurt”; it worked for Chris and “Cliff” Paul! But you keep on keeping on, Washington.

[Dan Steinberg on Twitter]