He’s an NFL Hall of Famer who became a superstar and all-time Washington great on the field at RFK Stadium. Now, Darrell Green is hoping the next generation of legends will also have success at a new stadium on the RFK site in D.C.

Ahead of the first two days of public hearings and an initial vote on the project, Green said he saw the value of playing in the city and speculated that a return “would mean the world” for D.C.

“That was a bad day, to leave the city,” Green said. “And I love Maryland, but that wasn’t a good thing.”

He said as soon as he was drafted by the franchise in the early 1980s, he believed he was about to see something special.

“I knew coming here, like, ‘wow, these people are awesome, this community, this city, this stadium, this team,’ and it had extraordinary value,” Green said. “I’m not the author of it, but I was a participant of it. And that stadium and the city and the affiliation was a huge value as I traveled out and served the community.”

He said, putting politics aside, he believes the franchise and the city both benefited from that connection along East Capitol Street, and he believes a return would bring exponential value again in the long term.

“I’m not talking today, tomorrow,” he said. “Sometimes location, location, location, people, people, people, community, community — sometimes that’s a bigger value than you may be looking at.”

While there are certainly more positive memories for the team in D.C., compared to the subsequent decades in Maryland, Green said nostalgia for the good old days is one of, but not the only, reason so many fans want the team to return.

“It is nostalgia, but it’s economics,” he said. “One of the unique parts about making a decision today is that it’s not just about today. … What we do today will impact our city in the future, so I hope we make all the right decisions.”