page_title: History of the Washington Football Team
section_title: Establishment in Boston (1932 to 1936)
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Washington Football Team / Establishment in Boston (1932 to 1936)
caption_attribution_description: Fenway Park exterior.
context_page_description: The Washington Football Team has played over 1,000 games. In those games, the club has won five professional American football championships including two NFL Championships and three Super Bowls. The franchise has also captured 15 NFL divisional titles and five NFC championships.
  The team won the 1937 and 1942 Championship games, as well as Super Bowl XVII, XXII, and XXVI. They also played in and lost the 1936, 1940, 1943, and 1945 Championship games, as well as Super Bowl VII and XVIII. They have made 24 postseason appearances, and have an overall postseason record of 23 wins and 19 losses. Only five teams have appeared in more Super Bowls than Washington: the New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, Denver Broncos, and the San Francisco 49ers; Washington's five appearances are tied with the Oakland Raiders, Miami Dolphins, New York Giants, and Green Bay Packers.
  All of the franchise's league titles were attained during two ten-year spans. From 1936 to 1945, the Redskins went to the NFL Championship six times, winning two of them.
context_section_description: The city of Boston, was awarded an NFL franchise on July 9, 1932, under the ownership of George Preston Marshall, Vincent Bendix, Jay O'Brien, and Dorland Doyle. The team took the place of the temporary traveling Cleveland Indians, who themselves were operated under the franchise of the Newark Tornadoes after the Tornadoes had left the league after the 1930 season and had sold its franchise rights back to the NFL. Despite this, neither team management nor the NFL claim that the Indians or Tornadoes were earlier incarnations of the team currently in Washington. Additionally, none of the members of the 1930 Newark Tornadoes roster, and only two of the 1931 Indians (Algy Clark and Dale Waters), remained on the 1932 Boston Braves roster.
  Initially, the new team took the same name as their landlords, the Boston Braves, one of the two local Major League Baseball teams. The Braves played their first game on October 2, 1932, under the leadership of coach Lud Wray, against the Brooklyn Dodgers, to whom they lost 14–0. The next week, the Braves recorded their first win, beating the New York Giants, 14–6. The new franchise's losses during the first season reached $46,000 and Bendix, O'Brien, and Doyle dropped out of the investment, leaving Marshall the sole owner of the Braves. The team moved to Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox) the next year, and Marshall changed the name to the “Redskins”, A 1933 news article quotes Marshall as saying that he did not name the team specifically in honor of Dietz or any of the team's native members, but because Marshall wanted to avoid any confusion with the Braves baseball squad while still keeping the native connotations of the previous moniker (unlike “Indians", used by another baseball team, no professional sports team at the time was using the name “Redskins”).
  Dietz's first year as coach in 1933 was unremarkable, and the Redskins finished with a 5–5–2 record. However, one impressive feat during the season was Cliff Battle's performance against the Giants on October 8, 1933, where he rushed 16 times for 215 yards (197 m), and scored one touchdown and became the first player ever to rush for more than 200 yards (180 m) in a game.
  Dietz was fired after posting a 6–6 record in 1934, and Eddie Casey was hired as his replacement. During the 1935 season, the Redskins split their first two games before going into a season-long scoring slump, posting only 23 points during a seven-game losing streak. The Redskins posted a win and a tie in their final two games, finishing with a 2–8–1 record, while only scoring 65 points on the season. Casey was fired at the end of the season.
caption: Fenway Park was the home of the Boston Redskins and Boston Red Sox from 1933 to 1936.
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