Robert Griffin III will be back as the Washington Redskins quarterback in 2015, putting an end to months of speculation.
While speaking at the Scouting Combine, head coach Jay Gruden confirmed the third year player, and previous Heisman winner, would be under centre going into the new NFL season.
It was a rocky year for the first-time NFL head coach and the former offensive rookie of the year, with the situation recalling some of the tension suffered between Griffin and his former coach, Mike Shanahan, just a year previously.
According to a new interview with Shanahan, Griffin and owner Dan Snyder were to blame for a lot of the troubles suffered in 2013. Shanahan says that just two days after Super Bowl XLVII, RGIII called a meeting with Shanahan and – wait for it – told his own coach that some of the plays Shanahan was calling were “unacceptable”.
Griffin even had the audacity to state that “he wasn’t a rookie anymore” (being two days removed from the Super Bowl, he was now technically in his second season), and that he wanted to “be more of a dropback, Aaron Rodgers-type guy”.
Shanahan said that Snyder often used the word ‘unacceptable’ too and wanted Griffin to become more of a pocket passer, so Shanahan says he knew where the demands were really coming from. That arrogance displayed by RGIII still seemed to be in effect in November of last year.
After a home loss to the woeful Tampa Bay Buccaneers in which he threw two interceptions and was sacked six times, Griffin said that “those guys don’t play well if their guys don’t play well”. ‘Those guys’ he was referring to? Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers.
Let’s analyse this statement.
Not only is Griffin criticising his teammates and shifting the blame – strong leadership and the ability to accept your mistakes is a core tenet for any good quarterback to succeed – he is comparing himself to two of the best quarterbacks in the league who play at a level Griffin looks unlikely to ever reach.
Is it a coincidence that Snyder reportedly wanted RGIII to be more of a pocket passer, and the two players to which RGIII compares himself to are pocket passers?
Following these immature and infantile comments from Griffin, Gruden said that his quarterback had “fundamental flaws”, and needs to worry more about himself and less about his teammates. These fundamental flaws raised by Gruden have been evident since Griffin’s entry into the league three years ago.
Putting together a 14-35 record as a starter, his career in Washington has been marred by injury and under-performance. The last time Washington made the playoffs was 2012, the year Griffin won offensive rookie of the year, and re-injured his knee in the loss to the Seahawks.
If Griffin wants to succeed in this league, he needs to take responsibility for his actions, and learn how to be an NFL quarterback better. That includes learning how to read defences, and fundamentally, just learning how to play quarterback in an NFL offence.
If he wants to become a pocket passer quarterback (or moreover, if Dan Snyder wants him to become one), then there is only one person who can make that change, and put in that work, and that begins with Griffin himself.
In an article published on NFL.com, it was noted that the re-affirmation of Griffin as the Washington quarterback going forward was directly at odds with Gruden’s statements earlier in the year, as well as certain incidents such as the Redskins sending out promotional material that did not feature Griffin’s name.
The article said that it was most likely a decision from ‘upstairs’ (read: Dan Snyder) to retain RGIII, coupled with the fact of there being no real free agent talent at quarterback combined with the massive investment Washington undertook to draft him.
If RGIII had been the number one pick back in 2012, instead of the number two pick, would he be out of Washington by now? All we know is that he’ll be the Redskins quarterback when the 2015 NFL season starts in September, and it’s his job to lose.
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