Washington Commanders Announce Addition to Football Operations Braintrust
The Washington Commanders have had a lot of eyes on their football operations lately.
From one week to the next, it seems one side of the ball or the other costs the Commanders a shot at winning valuable games this NFL season, and with each loss, there are questions about how the failures come to be.
While many search for a singular point of failure the truth is that the blame resides within the group, and that group now has one more name in it because Washington announced Thursday it hired Eugene Shen to be the senior vice president of football strategy.
"Bringing Eugene's level of expertise to lead our analytics and software development enables us to build on our data capabilities to help inform decision making," coach Ron Rivera said via press release. "Eugene brings a great deal of practical NFL experience, and we look forward to bringing him into our conversations about the vision of our team going forward. The willingness of our ownership group to follow through on their pledge to allocate resources to data and analytics is exciting for the future of the franchise."
Washington Commanders coach Ron Rivera speaking with running back Bran Robinson Jr. (8) during a game.
Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports
According to the press release, Shen has experience in both coaching and analytics serving previously as vice president of football analytics with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
In that role, Shen oversaw data and analytics for the Jaguars' entire football operation.
Shen also spent time with the Miami Dolphins (2019-21) and with the Baltimore Ravens (2014-19) where he was the director of coaching analytics working closely with coach John Harbaugh during his time there.
"It's an exciting time to be joining the legendary franchise, and I look forward to working with coach Rivera and the front office to help shape the vision of the franchise going forward," Shen said. "I have immense respect for the hard work that coaches and talent evaluators put into roster construction, team building and game strategy, and I believe that an increase in resources will provide further tools to inform the decisions we make as a franchise going forward as part of the ongoing work to become the best in the NFL."
Time will tell how impactful Shen's addition will be to future Commanders success, but the effort to get smarter on how to understand and implement analytics to the process is clearly another step in the right direction for the franchise.
