Washington NFL legend Darrell Green to be honored with key to city, jersey retirement

Darrell Green, who starred two decades at cornerback for the Washington Redskins, continues to hear the cheers.

In the lead-up to a jersey retirement during Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers, the Hall of Famer will receive a key to the District and a personalized suite at Northwest Stadium. 

The Ageless Wonder, who played from 1983 to 2002, had 19 straight seasons with an interception, the most games played by any defender and the fastest unofficial 40-yard dash — a ridiculous 4.09 at training camp in 1986. 

And Green, 64, still has it. Twenty-two years removed from his playing career, he showed off the footwork that terrorized opposing offenses in a viral video this year. 

“Walter Payton Man of the Year off the field, Super Bowl champion on the field, clearly a guy who not only had his football world in order, but his off-the-field world as well,” Commanders coach Dan Quinn said this week, noting that some of Green’s stats “slap me in the face. … That we get to kind of be around and knowing that’s going down, it’s awesome.”

For years, former owner Dan Snyder angered fans for refusing to officially retire the jerseys of legendary Redskins. Active players respected the numbers of Sonny Jurgensen and Sean Taylor, but only Sammy Baugh’s No. 33 was officially off-limits.

That changed toward the end of the Snyder era. The franchise honored Bobby Mitchell in 2020, Taylor a year later and Jurgensen in 2022. When new owner Josh Harris took over in 2023, Green was an obvious choice as the next honoree.

“For 20 years, Darrell Green gave everything he had to this organization and fan base,” Harris said in a release from the team in the spring. “Even after retiring from the burgundy and gold, he remained committed to giving back to this community, which to this day holds him in the highest regard. No one on our team will ever again wear No. 28.”

As Harris noted, Green’s connection to the region extends beyond football. The long-time Northern Virginia resident is an associate athletic director at George Mason University, once served as an education spokesman for the Wolf Trap Foundation and started his own faith-based charity in the 1980s to run after-school programs. 

His efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Those charitable efforts will be front and center when Green receives the key to the city on Saturday. 

“Being a Hall of Famer off the field, that’s something we want to celebrate,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told 106.7 The Fan’s “The Sports Junkies” on Thursday. “If you’re like me and you grew up with Washington, Darrell Green is the Washington football team.”

The Commanders sprang something else on the two-time Super Bowl winner this week: the personalized suite at Northwest Stadium.

The luxury box features tons of memorabilia, from trading cards to bobbleheads and souvenir plates, all featuring Green. The walls are decorated with photos from his playing days, some of his gaudy statistics and replicas of the Lombardi trophies he won after the 1987 and 1991 NFL seasons. 

The displays, which include a mock locker depicting each decade of his career, almost left Green speechless. 

“I have to admit, this is very awesome,” the notoriously humble Green said in a video released by the team. “This is really nice.”