Under Dan Snyder, Washington sank from NFL elite to also-ran

— Super Bowl-winning defensive end Fred Stokes remembers what he heard from other players in 1989 when he left the Los Angeles Rams as a free agent to join the NFL team based in the nation’s capital. “When I got here,” Stokes said, “the guys all told me, ‘We’re all about winning.’ Washington and winning went together.” This was back when D.C.’s football franchise was in the midst of making the postseason eight times in 11 years, a run of success that featured four Super Bowl appearances and three championships. So what does Stokes see nowadays when he looks at what has become of what are now known as the Commanders, following the discarding of an offensive name amid a national reckoning about racism in 2020 — although Snyder’s wife, Tanya, and the team president, Jason Wright, seemed to forget about that change on Sunday, when both gave shoutouts to the old moniker at a “homecoming” rally outside the stadium featuring dozens of former players? Attendance is at the bottom of the league, but some of the spectators on hand Sunday let their feelings be known — during a victory, no less, by a score of 23-21 against four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers that improved last-place Washington’s record to 3-4 this season — by booing and then chanting “Sell the team!” after Tanya Snyder was part of a video about breast cancer awareness that played on the videoboard. “They want to be with you through thick and thin, but they need something to cheer about.” Heading into its next game, at Irsay’s Colts on Sunday, Washington’s winning percentage of.424 since the start of the 1999 season — based on a regular-season record of 159-216-1 that does not include a single campaign of more than 10 victories — is better than just four clubs: Cleveland, Detroit, Jacksonville and Las Vegas.