Finlay raves about new Commanders hire Brandon Sosna's impressive credentials

JP Finlay is back from vacation, and he returned with plenty of optimism around the Commanders after announcing the hiring of Brandon Sosna as their new senior vice president of football operations.

Pouring over Sosna’s resume, which includes being at Cincinnati as the athletic department’s Chief of Staff when the Bearcats reached the College Football Playoff, Finlay was more than impressed with this latest hire.

Sosna followed up his second stint at Cincinnati by helping rebuild the football program at USC, and is credited with being one of the driving forces that led to the Trojans hiring Lincoln Riley as their next head coach.

“If you think about this Brandon Sosna dude. Visionary. Probably audacious to some degree,” Finlay said. “The audacity to say, ‘Screw the Pac 12, we’re going to the Big 10, and our team is going to play against Rutgers.’ The audacity of the logistics and travel involved is fairly ridiculous, but it’s looking ahead to kind of the future.”

Sosna then moved up to the NFL, becoming the senior director of football administration for the Lions after joining the organization in 2022. A year later, Detroit enjoyed its most successful season in decades.

“What Detroit did the last couple years is really impressive,” Finlay said. “They turned around 30 years of awful football. Last year, they were three or four plays away from going to the Super Bowl.”

Simply put, Finlay believes there is plenty of reason for optimism with the newest member of the Commanders front office.