The Washington Commanders suspended an employee after a video on social media showed him making disparaging comments about players, fans and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
Commanders vice president of content Rael Enteen said in the video posted by O’Keefe Media Group that some players were dumb and homophobic. O’Keefe Media Group said the videos were recorded by an undercover journalist during two dates after the journalist matched with Enteen on a dating app. The journalist was not named but can be heard on the video.
In the video, Enteen says, “Over 50 percent of our roster is white religious and God says, ‘F— the gays.’ Their interpretation. I don’t buy any of that. Another big chunk is low-income African Americans that come from a community that is inherently very homophobic.”
Shortly after the video was released, the Commanders released a statement condemning Enteen’s words, saying “The language used in the video runs counter to our values at the Commanders organization.” The statement said that the Commanders have suspended Enteen pending an internal investigation into the matter.
The O’Keefe Media Group, founded by James O’Keefe, says on its site that it uses “citizen journalists” with support from an in-house team of journalists to produce content. O’Keefe, a political activist, was the founder of Project Veritas before leaving the company in February 2023. Project Veritas has been known to use deceptive techniques to secretly record videos, and has been accused of deceptively editing videos in the past.
Enteen has worked for four years with Washington after previously spending two years with the New York Jets organization.
In the video, Enteen called football fans “high school-educated alcoholics” and “mouth breathers.”
Enteen also said in the video that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones “really runs the NFL. I think he hates gay people, black people.” He called Goodell “a $50 million puppet” and said the NFL’s social justice efforts were performative.
When discussing his job, Enteen brought up a 2021 incident when pipes leaked at FedEx Field during a game and fans complained that it smelled like sewage. He said he had to tweet on behalf of the team that the leaks were only water and called the tweet “state-run media.”
(Photo: Brett Davis / USA Today)
