Martin Mayhew says young talent and a changing culture helped bring him to Washington

In the end, Martin Mayhew notes that Washington’s young talent and a changing culture around Ron Rivera helped bring him to Washington.

For one of the first times since taking the role of general manager with the Washington Football Team, Martin Mayhew spoke on Wednesday, expressing some of the excitement that brought him to D.C. alongside Ron Rivera and Marty Hurney.

One of the main things that Mayhew mentioned was the young talent already on the roster, which led him to say he believes Washington is in a better situation than both the Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers were when he joined their staffs.

“I look at this team as being better than both of those teams when I walked in,” Mayhew said. “Having won a division, having young talent like Terry McLaurin, Chase Young, Montez Sweat, so many talented young players.”

The job of a GM is usually to build a core of young talent to work with for the future, but a lot of that has already been done in D.C. On top of that, the culture change has already started under Rivera as well.

“I think Coach Rivera did a great job last year of sort of working on changing the culture and you can see that,” Mayhew said. “You can see that watching this team play. That final playoff game, when Heinicke was playing, the way the team rallied around him, it was really something special to watch.”

When you look at things that way, then the GM job in Washington was obviously pretty enticing. The number one thing to focus on now is getting a top quarterback in the building for Washington. There just so happens to be a guy in Detriot that Mayhew selected with the No. 1 overall pick when he was with the Lions as well…

Does that mean anything? Perhaps, but we’ll see if it’s enough in the end.

[vertical-gallery id=46411]