Commanders’ Ron Rivera reveals reason for fining Jack Del Rio $100,000

The Washington Commanders‘ three-day mandatory minicamp got underway on Tuesday and head coach Ron Rivera addressed the media after practice.

As expected, Terry McLaurin’s holdout was the main topic of conversation. Essentially, Rivera understands where the star wide receiver is coming from and remains confident McLaurin will eventually be back with the team.

The other prominent talking point? That would be Jack Del Rio’s insensitive tweets and remarks about the insurrection at the Capitol, which he referred to as a “dust-up” and likened to the countrywide protests against racial injustice in 2020.

The controversy became a national storyline and Washington, through Rivera, fined Del Rio $100,000 in the aftermath. The team’s defensive coordinator has since deactivated his Twitter account, and both acts led certain folks to assume Del Rio was being punished for exercising his First Amendment right.

That, however, is anything but the case, as Rivera explained to the media after Tuesday’s minicamp practice.

The Commanders’ Ron Rivera fining Jack Del Rio had nothing to do with Del Rio exercising his freedom of speech.

Here’s part of Rivera’s opening statement.

"Just so everybody understands, this is (about) not the fact that he exercised his right to free speech. This is about what impacted the football team. I believe in the First Amendment very strongly. But the thing we all have to understand with these rights, these freedoms come tremendous responsibility, and we have to understand that as well.This is about the impact that was made on our football team, the distraction it has become. It’s a very serious question and topic, but at the end of the day, it did impact us, and that’s why I did what I did."

As is often the case in today’s world, Rivera’s decision to fine Del Rio was twisted as a blatant violation of the coordinator’s First Amendment right. In reality, though, Del Rio’s comments unsettled the locker room and served as a wholly unnecessary distraction at the conclusion of organized team activities.

That’ll happen when you insinuate the Black Lives Matter protest weren’t condemned enough compared to what transpired at the Capitol. After publicly apologizing on Twitter before he deleted his account, Del Rio took things a step further and addressed the team in a private meeting before minicamp.

"“He (Del Rio) was very open, very forthright, very contrite and apologized and opened himself up to questions or opportunities for players to come in and meet with him,” Rivera said. “He has already met with some of our players and talked to some of them about what was said and I’ve been told those meetings went very, very well.”"

Rivera didn’t elaborate when he was asked if Del Rio is working on his “last strike,” but it’s not farfetched to assume the 59-year-old coordinator could receive the pink slip if he poses another unnecessary distraction to the team.

For now, though, it seems like Rivera and the Commanders can put this story on the back burner and focus on tackling minicamp head-on.