The emotions were immediate upon entering the room. Smiles broke across faces. Laughter spilled at old photos of football during a different time. Tears welled during a film on the man they were all there to celebrate.
"It was amazing. It was overwhelming. It was just wonderful," Christine Beathard, Bobby Beathard's spouse, said. "It was like having somebody really appreciate what Bobby was."
The source of these sentiments for Christine and her family was the unveiling of the Bobby Beathard Draft Room at OrthoVirginia Training Center. Named after the most successful general manager in Washington's history and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the space is a tribute to and a reminder of Beathard's inspiring legacy on and off the field.
In a world where winning means so much, there's little question as to why a team would want to carry forward and exalt the work of Bobby Beathard. He was a winner. Four Super Bowl appearances, three Lombardi trophies and several gold jackets were produced by his brilliance in Washington.
"Shoot, if we're half as good as him, we'll be alright," general manager Adam Peters said with a laugh.
While a lot has changed about football in recent decades, out-of-the-box thinking and strong discernment – qualities Beathard was known for – continue to be keys to success. The draft room brings that truth front and center for all the personnel who will spend time inside.
"Building teams in the past isn't really any different than the way it is right now. You're still going out evaluating football players. You're hiring good scouts that can go out and identify good players that fit the type of culture you want," Jeff Beathard, who is currently a scout with the Commanders, said.
Championing Beathard the visionary is about where Washington is going just as much as it is about where the team has been.
"We'll always be inspired by Bobby and everything he's done here," Peters said.
What he did isn't limited to hardware and accolades. With its décor and design, the draft room strives to capture that depth of Beathard's time in Washington.
"People write stories, and they write about what he's done, but that room made me think people understood that he was so much more than a good GM," Christine Beathard said. "So many of the pictures, he was smiling or laughing. And I look at some of the videos where he is running out on the field and he embraces virtually everybody he meets."
Beathard's approach to his work – which he said never felt like work – built a one-of-a-kind culture in Washington and impacted everyone he crossed paths with.
"Football is my whole life," Beathard once told the Washington Post. "It's all I've ever wanted to do… If I had a lot of money and I didn't have to work, I'd still want to do this."
The quote is highlighted in the draft room next to Beathard's Pro Football Hall of Fame bust. The former GM simply loved the process and the people he went through it with. It was perhaps this passion, this respect for his vocation that made him so serious about creating family-like bonds in his football operation.
"He knew he couldn't do all this on his own, so he surrounded himself with the right people in the right spots…the people that he surrounded himself with, he trusted them," Jeff Beathard explained. "He wanted to hear everything, and then that's how he would make decisions. But it was just a complete, 'let's work and build and do all this whole process together.'"
The coming together to celebrate the new draft room honored that joyful, team-first spirit Beathard was so committed to. Peters and Jeff Beathard had tears in their eyes standing at the front. Every scout was there to partake in the occasion. So, too were Coach Quinn, Lance Newmark – who had got his start on the Chargers staff led by Beathard in the '90s –, Managing Partner Josh Harris and other members of Washington's ownership group. All the while, the youngest generations of Beathards played at their feet.
That a room named after him was the catalyst for such a scene would no doubt give Bobby Beathard so much pride.
"Having everybody together in that real fun way, that was Bobby," Christine said. "I know that he was there in the room when we were there."
