Washington Football Team: Parallels between Ron Rivera and Ted Lasso

There remains uncertainty with Ron Rivera in his first year as the Washington Football Team’s head coach, but an unlikely source can help us learn more about his perspective.

With the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, 2020 has become the year of binge-watching. We’ve all had friends tell us about Tiger King, The Queen’s Gambit, Never Have I Ever, and of course, The Last Dance. Instead of asking if someone has been to any new restaurants or bars, this year’s conversations have focused on the next series to stream.

Recently, I started streaming a new series on Apple TV called Ted Lasso. The show is about a coach from Kansas who is hired to lead a Premier League soccer team in England. The irony is that the coach does not have any experience coaching at the professional level, let alone have any knowledge of the game of soccer.

I had heard good things about the show, but being a fan of football more than fútbol, I wasn’t sure if it would be my jam. But here I was, binging 10 episodes, while being won over by Ted Lasso’s character.

The more I watched, the more I kept thinking, “Man, this guy sure does remind me of Washington Football Team head coach Ron Rivera.” Now, this might be a case of trying too hard to find correlations between art and reality but stick with me here, and I’ll try to run through some of the parallels I noticed.