Washington’s NFL team will go by the name “Washington Football Team” until a new name can be chosen, two people with knowledge of the situation said.

The team is expected to announce the move Thursday. It is not clear how long the team will play under the interim name.

A person familiar with conversations between the NFL and the team had said last week that a name change would need to come before the start of training camp on July 28, simply because the team needed to have uniforms to wear.

The revealing of the temporary name comes near the end of a tumultuous month in which owner Daniel Snyder was forced to move away from the organization’s 87-year old name “Redskins” under intense pressure from club sponsors, including stadium naming rights holder FedEx, which demanded Snyder drop a name many consider to be offensive and a slur toward Native Americans.

On July 3, the team announced it would do a “through review” of the name. Last Monday, the team released a three-paragraph statement saying it would “retire” Redskins at the end of the review. At the time, a person with knowledge of the team’s plans said it was possible the club would play under the name “Washington Football Team” given the tight timeframe between the retiring of Redskins and the start of camp. Corporate rebrandings often take at least two months and often much longer to complete.

Snyder, a lifelong fan of the team fan, had vigorously defended the name since buying the team in 1999, stalling several strong pushes to change it. “We’ll never change the name, it’s that simple,” he told USA Today in 2013 during a rare interview. “NEVER — you can use all caps.”

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But in the social uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May, with corporations and governments around the country removing logos and symbols considered to be offensive, the pressure to drop the old name — including from some of the franchise’s most important sponsors — was too great.

On July 2, FedEx sent a letter to a team attorney saying the company would end it’s naming rights deal and not pay the contract’s remaining $45 million if the team didn’t change the name. That same day, FedEx also released a statement saying it had asked the team to make the change. Other top sponsors including Bank of America, PepsiCo and Nike made similar demands.

In an interview two days later, Washington Coach Ron Rivera said he had been talking to Snyder about changing the name since late May. He added that Snyder started working with NFL officials on the issue in late June. Rivera also said he and Snyder had been bouncing new team names off each other and that the coach particularly liked two of the options.

Rivera said he wanted the new name to honor both Native Americans and the military, saying that many native people join the military. Under Snyder, the team has formed close bonds with military organizations, believing the two have a natural connection given the franchise’s proximity to the Pentagon and other military offices.

The name issue is one of many crises facing the organization. The team’s three top minority investors, including FedEx CEO Fred Smith, are trying to sell their shares — which is roughly 40 percent of the franchise. Last week, the team announced an internal review of its culture following a Washington Post report in which 15 female former employees and two female reporters accused team officials of sexual harassment.

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