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Robert Griffin III "heartbroken" over split...

Playoffs

Playoffs

Hall of Fame
Who knew...?

The Complicated Reinvention of RG3
The first step in rebuilding RG3 was to mend a broken heart.

For all the flash and dazzle and public bravado, Robert Griffin III is a sensitive young man barely two years removed from the protective cocoon of Baylor, his nearby Texas hometown of Copperas Cove and the Sunday night hair-braiding sessions with his mother Jackie they called “mommy time.” He longs to be liked. And last fall’s divorce from Redskins coach Mike Shanahan tore a hole inside him far more damaging than the shredded knee in the 2012 playoffs that seemed to ignite their breakup.

He grew up admiring Shanahan, then the ruddy, taciturn general of his beloved Denver Broncos, and the coach’s sudden disapproval was devastating. “Robert thought Mike hated him,” says a former Redskins teammate who did not want to speak on the record in part because he believes Griffin needs to get past Shanahan.

As Shanahan pushed him away with icy glares in the waning weeks of a ruined 2013 season and stories appeared saying the team’s coaches couldn’t work with him, Griffin struggled to understand why.

“It’s like he had an ex-girlfriend he loved or wanted to love and he can’t,” the former teammate adds.

Some of those who know Griffin from his college days say he is a uniquely honest man, incapable of the little lies people tell to get through social situations. They say his sincerity is one of his most endearing traits.

But it also means he does not mask his emotions well. Friends wish he would stop talking about Shanahan. That time has passed. And yet there festers inside him an urge to explain something. To make people understand. To let them know what it was like.

“For me it was just heartbreaking,” Griffin says. “You know with everything that happened—came into the league with—I was a huge Bronco fan, everybody knew that, and I had the coach of my dreams pick me in the draft.”

He stops. He repeats himself. "Heartbreaking,” he says.

Griffin sits now on a leather couch inside a foyer that leads from the practice fields to the locker room at the Redskins headquarters. This should be a...
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As Shanahan pushed him away with icy glares in the waning weeks of a ruined 2013 season and stories appeared saying the team’s coaches couldn’t work with him, Griffin struggled to understand why.
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Shanahan is an a-hole, and an over-rated coach at that. What has he accomplished since John Elway?

As far as RGIII, dude needs to put his big boy pants on. This is not good for his image. Even my 12 yo knows there's no crying in football unless it's for winning or losing a game.
 
Showtime100 said:
No offense to you for posting this, Playoffs, but it was a good laugh more than anything.
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No, I didn't really pay much attention to all the RG3/Shanny drama when it was happening, but for some reason I thought it was RG3 who did not like Shanihan..... so this surprised me.
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Jay Gruden offers honest assessment of Robert Griffin III's play

...
So Griffin, 32 starts into his NFL career, is still very much the project he was three springs ago. Asked if he considers the quarterback raw, the coach doesn't hesitate: "Oh yeah. Very raw. Very raw."

"They did a great job with him that first year," Gruden said. "They had the element of surprise with that zone-read, the pitches off of it; they did everything to utilize him. But then he got hurt, and they weren't able to do a lot of that stuff. And now, OK, you gotta do more dropback concepts, and he struggled. And he had the injury, so they shut him down. And then I came."

Since, the problems have been twofold. First, because he's a different type of quarterback, and because he missed those six weeks, Gruden says it's been "very difficult" for the staff to get a handle on the best way to build an offensive identity around him. Second, because he saw very few coverages as a rookie -- since the Redskins ran an option offense -- and has been banged up since, he's still behind in learning how to match up and adjust offensive concepts against defensive schemes.

Griffin's numbers aren't terrible. But to stare at those and validate his play would be like declaring the Lakers healthy because Kobe Bryant is leading the NBA in scoring.

"It's a production-based business. We haven't won many games lately with him," Gruden said. "We gotta figure out a way to get in the end zone. We just have to score. I don't care how we do it. If it's running the zone-read, I don't care. Quarterback sneaks, I don't give a damn. We gotta find a way to utilize him where we can get productive drives and stay away from negative plays and have some consistency."

And yes, the off-field stuff is a factor, too. One Redskins source acknowledged there is an element of Griffin fatigue in the building now: "We just want him to stop talking and play. He has to outperform all the antics."

Gruden got his two cents in this past Monday before apologizing for airing that laundry two days later. But the problems are real.

"His biggest thing, he's been coddled for so long. It's not a negative, he's just been so good, he just hasn't had a lot of negative publicity," Gruden said. "Everybody's loved him. Some adversity is striking hard at him now, and how he reacts to that off the field, his mental state of mind, how it affects his confidence, hopefully it's not in a negative way. I read Drew Brees said after a couple interceptions, 'I'm never gonna lose confidence, I'm gonna come out firing all the time.' "

The coach wants Griffin to be that way now. And Gruden said that he's seen cracks there, too, where Griffin is unsure of what he's looking at, which leads to sacks and turnovers in spots where the quarterback should be letting the ball fly. (You can ask DeSean Jackson about that.)

"The big thing is negative plays," Gruden said, "way too many."

And all of this leaves everyone in D.C. in a weird spot. Come early May, the team will have to make a call on Griffin's 2016 option (which would cost $16.12 million, based on a projected $143 million cap). Gruden has been frank in saying that the organization still has to assess its future at quarterback.

"He's auditioned long enough," Gruden said. "Clock's ticking. He's gotta play. We'll see. ... We want Robert to excel, we really do. But the last two games, it hasn't been very good, anywhere. We gotta play better around him. And the biggest thing for us as play-callers, and for him, we just have to come together and jell with plays he's comfortable with. That takes time. But we don't have a lot of time."

Griffin's relationship with the owner, the draft picks he cost the team, his face-of-the-franchise standing -- all of that could also come into play later. With six games left, only this much is clear: The honeymoon for Griffin in D.C. is most assuredly over.
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Steve Young came out with a report the other day about how RG3 doesn't put in the work and that's why he's not progressing and why there is trouble in the locker room. He's also "in" with management which pisses a lot of players off too.
 
WolverineFan said:
Steve Young came out with a report the other day about how RG3 doesn't put in the work and that's why he's not progressing and why there is trouble in the locker room. He's also "in" with management which pisses a lot of players off too.
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Clean up, clean up, everybody clean up...I guess this is Steve's attempt:

"I have no insight. I have no sense of what he does game to game, week to week," Young said. "It's not putting time in week to week to play football. It's, and I've said this many times, it takes as much memorization and classroom work as it did for me in law school.
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Rest of his phone comments here: ESPN Link
 
Playoffs said:
Jay Gruden offers honest assessment of Robert Griffin III's play
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I've got absolutely no respect for Jay Gruden. The conversation here... I don't think he is saying it with the interest of making RGIII a better player. This sounds more like a, "I hate to be so mean, but this is going to force my boss to let me do things my way, including get my QB."

Everything he is saying may very well be true, I'm not denying that. But this guy has definitely chosen a side & it doesn't appear that RGIII is on that side.

I didn't like the way he came out with the, "It's my place to criticize the other players." I don't think RGIII was criticizing the other players... he was just running out the company line (like OB did for Fitz) since it didn't appear that the coach was going to run it out there. Everything RGIII said, Gruden should have already said.

If he wanted to do what was best for the team, he should have continued to start Cousins, or find a way to win with Griffith. & if he couldn't do either, he dang sure shouldn't be "baring his soul" to the media now.

RGIII's time may be done in Washington.... but Gruden should be right behind him.
 
thunderkyss said:
Everything he is saying may very well be true, I'm not denying that. But this guy has definitely chosen a side & it doesn't appear that RGIII is on that side.
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Perhaps Griffin made it very easy for him to choose sides? We don't know and might not ever know, but I'm tired of people trying to give Griffin a pass and pass the buck to the coaches. This is the 2nd coach he has butt heads with and I highly doubt that they both just had it out for the guy. I would say that RG3 is at least part of the problem.
 
thunderkyss said:
I've got absolutely no respect for Jay Gruden. The conversation here... I don't think he is saying it with the interest of making RGIII a better player. This sounds more like a, "I hate to be so mean, but this is going to force my boss to let me do things my way, including get my QB."

Everything he is saying may very well be true, I'm not denying that. But this guy has definitely chosen a side & it doesn't appear that RGIII is on that side.
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Gruden didn't come out with this stuff until after RGIII said in a post-game press conference;

“It takes 11 men," Griffin said. "It doesn’t take one guy, and that’s proven. If you want to look at the good teams in this league and the great quarterbacks, the Peytons and the Aaron Rodgers, those guys don’t play well if their guys don’t play well. They don’t.
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I don't think Gruden would have ever said any of that stuff if RGIII hadn't thrown that out there.
 
eriadoc said:
I don't think Gruden would have ever said any of that stuff if RGIII hadn't thrown that out there.
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That's what OB said about Fitz. Not word for word, but pretty much the same thing. Had Gruden said it first, said it the right way, RGIII wouldn't have had to say anything.

WolverineFan said:
Perhaps Griffin made it very easy for him to choose sides? We don't know and might not ever know, but I'm tired of people trying to give Griffin a pass and pass the buck to the coaches. This is the 2nd coach he has butt heads with and I highly doubt that they both just had it out for the guy. I would say that RG3 is at least part of the problem.
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He may be. Still, I'd rather the headcoach put him in the doghouse than throw him under the bus. It doesn't matter what the rest of the world knows, or what the fans cry for. Everything he put out there in the last couple of days should have been between him, RGIII, Bruce Allen & Snyder. Now, he's painted the GM & Owner into a corner.
 
thunderkyss said:
That's what OB said about Fitz. Not word for word, but pretty much the same thing. Had Gruden said it first, said it the right way, RGIII wouldn't have had to say anything.
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RGIII didn't HAVE to say anything and it's not his place especially when he's one of the black marks.

In those circumstances a coach is not letting anyone be singled out. A player is making excuses.
 
infantrycak said:
RGIII didn't HAVE to say anything and it's not his place especially when he's one of the black marks.

In those circumstances a coach is not letting anyone be singled out. A player is making excuses.
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I agree with you. RGIII shouldn't have said anything. That was wrong. It was equally wrong for Gruden to come back & retaliate by throwing RGIII under the bus, "Oh yeah, he said we suk?? Well... well... he sux worse... Yeah, he sux soooo bad ...... " It's childish.

Gruden was right, it wasn't RGIII's place to say those things. Like OB did, Gruden should have been in front of it & RGIII wouldn't have been in that situation where that sounded like the right thing to do. Kubiak did it for Carr & eventually for Schaub. He did it for Case & he'd have done it for Tebow if he had to. That's what coaches do. The good ones anyway.

If that locker room wasn't divided before, Gruden just split the organization from top to bottom, stem to stern.
 
I don't approve of Gruden's comments either. I do think it is unfair to say he didn’t get in front of the issue. Iirc RGIII made his comments in the lockerroom post game. He didn't give his coach a chance to handle the issue. Carr, Schaub, Fitz are all smart enough to say "I have to play better, I'll be watching film and working with the coaches to do that."
 
False Start said:
:spit:

My little nephew had never seen the video of Smith, and we just watched it today....the slow-mo version. :mcnugget:
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It's actually very sad. Many times when you get very fat heavy......and then see the light and put in the commendable strong effort to lose weight and get into shape, your muscles can certainly benefit, but your skin has lost so much elasticity that it forgets to go back...........unfortunately, you can't exercise skin.
 
infantrycak said:
I don't approve of Gruden's comments either. I do think it is unfair to say he didn’t get in front of the issue. Iirc RGIII made his comments in the lockerroom post game. He didn't give his coach a chance to handle the issue.
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I think this has been brewing at least since the preseason. If I were listening to local radio & reading local news, I bet it was going on even earlier.

& I still don't think RGIII's comments meant what the media said they meant. The media made a mountain out of a mole hill & Gruden didn't, imo, take the high road.

"I saw the interview, heard the comments. He said the team needs to play better, he said he needs to play better. I agree, that's what I've been saying, & that's been my message to the team. It's not just one guy."

No doubt in my mind that's what OB would have said, or something similar.
 
thunderkyss said:
...He may be. Still, I'd rather the headcoach put him in the doghouse than throw him under the bus. It doesn't matter what the rest of the world knows, or what the fans cry for. Everything he put out there in the last couple of days should have been between him, RGIII, Bruce Allen & Snyder. Now, he's painted the GM & Owner into a corner.
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The owner pinned him into a corner first by pressuring him to start Griffin coming off injury when it sounded like Gruden wanted to go with McCoy. That doesn't make it right but they will fire his ass if he doesn't meet expectations. Maybe he thinks Griffin isn't the guy who will win him more games and he's trying to get out in front of that?

I honestly don't know what's going on up there. What I do know is that Snyder has a history of getting too involved and his coaches don't like it.

Snyder has taken all power away from Gruden by catering to Griffin the way that he has. Griffin knows that if he doesn't get his way with the coach he can just go over his head to the owner.

There are only two ways that franchise rights the ship. Griffin has to become an absolute superstar, which isn't likely IMO, or he has to go. Because as long as they are caught in between no coach is going to be able to get anything done.
 
Gruden did the right thing, imo, considering the situation Snyder created up there.

The owner is buddy-buddy with RG3. Seriously, they hang out.

The owner directed that RG3 have daily individual pressers during OTAs/TC. So RG3 stands up there every day and talks about himself. That's the opposite of team-building. Hence the resentment from other players and the RG-Me label.

RG3 does not have a thick skin, tends to look at others before looking in the mirror, and has developed some crappy body language.

Gruden needed to knock some reality into RG3 with tough love. And he needed to take a stand against the owner and past patterns of behavior. He cannot have success in DC under the status quo. If Snyder fires him, he'll have made his case for another gig.

Robert is not a leader on that team today. He's not the first guy in and last guy out. He has not put the time/focus in to perfect his craft. He's a guy who was a world class athlete, but not a worker -- didn't have to. His fundamentals are poor and he makes too many mental errors.

Snyder appointed RG3 as captain of the ship, and the ship is sinking below his feet. Jay needs to wrest the helm that should've been the Head Coach's all along. Time was appropriate for some hard talk.
 
bah007 said:
The owner pinned him into a corner first by pressuring him to start Griffin coming off injury when it sounded like Gruden wanted to go with McCoy. That doesn't make it right....
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That's all I'm saying.
 
Playoffs said:
Gruden did the right thing, imo, considering the situation Snyder created up there.
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All he did was open the door for the next HC. Pretty similar to what Singletary did in SanFrancisco with Vernon Davis. That relationship is damaged & will be very, very hard to put back together. There are better ways to have handled that situation.

Playoffs said:
Gruden needed to knock some reality into RG3 with tough love. And he needed to take a stand against the owner and past patterns of behavior. He cannot have success in DC under the status quo. If Snyder fires him, he'll have made his case for another gig.
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Doubt it. He pretty much proved that he is not HC material if he can't get in line with the company line & project team unity from the podium. The only way he'll even get considered for another HC gig is to make it work in Washington & get some wins. Now that he's alienated his starting QB & the world knows Cousins is worse than Griffin... I don't see how he is going to do that.


Playoffs said:
Snyder appointed RG3 as captain of the ship, and the ship is sinking below his feet. Jay needs to wrest the helm that should've been the Head Coach's all along. Time was appropriate for some hard talk.
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I agree with everything you're saying here. I just don't agree with how he went about it. I can't imagine an owner admiring the way Gruden underminded Snyder (I'm sure they're enjoying it) & saying, "That's what I want."

He should have benched RG3 & stuck with Cousins & when the media asks questions tell them the truth, "We've noticed some inconsistencies in Roberts play & feel it's in his best interest to work on those to help better prepare him to protect himself on the field. We're fully committed to Robert as an organization, he'll be back on the field soon, until then Kirk is going to be leading our team on Sunday."

Snyder might not like it, but I can see other owners admiring that conviction to do what he thinks is right, while toting the company line.
 
The moral of the story is don't go to work for Dan Snyder, Al Davis, Bud Adams, or Jerry Jones.
 
thunderkyss said:
All he did was open the door for the next HC. Pretty similar to what Singletary did in SanFrancisco with Vernon Davis. That relationship is damaged & will be very, very hard to put back together. There are better ways to have handled that situation.
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Maybe you're right. But Vernon Davis would tell you himself that the way Singletary treated him made him a better football player and a better man. The brain trust in SF might not have approved of Singletary's tactics but they let him do things his way. When it didn't work out they moved on.

Snyder isn't doing that at all. He hired a guy to coach and then all along the way tries to tell him how to do his job. If he doesn't like Gruden's style then he should just fire him now instead of letting this drag out. He continuously goes behind Gruden's back and reinforces the behavior that Gruden is trying to get rid of.

Doubt it. He pretty much proved that he is not HC material if he can't get in line with the company line & project team unity from the podium. The only way he'll even get considered for another HC gig is to make it work in Washington & get some wins. Now that he's alienated his starting QB & the world knows Cousins is worse than Griffin... I don't see how he is going to do that....
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He didn't alienate his starting QB. Griffin did that himself. And once again, instead of holding him accountable for his own actions, Snyder is giving him a pass and putting the blame on somebody else.
 
bah007 said:
Maybe you're right. But Vernon Davis would tell you himself that the way Singletary treated him made him a better football player and a better man.
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I believe that. No doubt about it. I'm just saying the relationship was damaged. Did Davis ever play well for Singletary? I could be wrong, but I don't think so, that locker room was split & the coach was on one side. He's supposed to be getting the 53 to play like 1.

They couldn't win, they canned him.


bah007 said:
Snyder isn't doing that at all. He hired a guy to coach and then all along the way tries to tell him how to do his job. If he doesn't like Gruden's style then he should just fire him now instead of letting this drag out. He continuously goes behind Gruden's back and reinforces the behavior that Gruden is trying to get rid of.
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I've got to imagine "fixing" RGIII was part of the deal. Maybe he can sell this as "fixing" him, but I don't think so.

bah007 said:
He didn't alienate his starting QB. Griffin did that himself. And once again, instead of holding him accountable for his own actions, Snyder is giving him a pass and putting the blame on somebody else.
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Again, one of the biggest problems I have here is that he is letting the media tell him what RGIII said. Those words can be interpreted a number of ways & when I heard them, I don't think it said what the "headlines" said it meant.

Just like Mallett's tweet, OB handled that a lot better (different situation, I know) than Gruden handled this.

What Griffin said is no different than what O'Brien has been saying when Fitzpatrick was starting. It's what Gruden should have been saying for weeks.

He doesn't need to go to the media to "fix" RGIII. He talks to him every day.

They can be as dysfunctional as they want behind closed doors, but they should present a solidified front to the public. One team.
 
Griffin looked like crap today. You just knew he wasn't going to deliver on that final drive.

11/19 for 106 yards and took 5 sacks along with a lost fumble on the final drive. This despite Morris running for 125 yards against a tough defensive front.

I won't say he's regressing (mostly because I never thought he was very good to begin with) but it's pretty incredible how consistently unproductive he is. He's now 1-9 in his last 10 starts and that "win" was the game against JAX where he got hurt in the 1st quarter and Cousins came on and threw for 250 and 2 TD's.
 
Rams @Redskins today...


Nick Wagoner @nwagoner
BTW, today's Rams coin toss captains were the six active roster players the team acquired using picks from the 2012 RG3 trade.
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Jeff Fischer trolling. :troll:
 
Playoffs said:
BTW, today's Rams coin toss captains were the six active roster players the team acquired using picks from the 2012 RG3 trade.
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So awesome. And then they proceeded to shut out Washington 24-0 on their own field while Griffin was the backup QB.
 
Asked what would happen if owner Dan Snyder and G.M. Bruce Allen tell Jay Gruden that he’s stuck with Griffin, Jon Gruden answered, “Well, you probably look for a new job at some point if the quarterback doesn’t perform in your offense or for your team. I mean, that’s the reality of it. If you don’t get the quarterback playing well you’re going to have a hard time surviving in pro football.”
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...others-in-the-middle-of-a-mess-in-washington/
 
Playoffs said:
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...others-in-the-middle-of-a-mess-in-washington/
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The guy is an idiot. I'd fire him. Not just for this, I wanted to fire him when he came out & threw RGIII under the bus.

Kubiak/O'Brien would have avoided the question all together. "Every decision we make is for the benefit of the team. If we decide that means RGIII is our QB, then that's because we feel like he is the best option going forward."

I could understand if he was winning, but all he's done is make excuses for himself since he got there.
 
thunderkyss said:
The guy is an idiot. I'd fire him. Not just for this, I wanted to fire him when he came out & threw RGIII under the bus.

Kubiak/O'Brien would have avoided the question all together. "Every decision we make is for the benefit of the team. If we decide that means RGIII is our QB, then that's because we feel like he is the best option going forward."

I could understand if he was winning, but all he's done is make excuses for himself since he got there.
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It was Jon Gruden that answered the question, not Jay.
 
MMQB: How They Broke RG3
Fueled by his performance as a rookie, Washington lavished Robert Griffin III with preferential treatment and risked putting him in harm’s way. Two years later, they have to dial things back in order to repair their franchise QB...

Two years ago, the Redskins’ fan base and, it appears, management was swept up in the emotion of a playoff run fueled by Griffin’s scintillating play, even while suffering a late-season knee injury. Then Griffin played on a clearly compromised leg in a playoff game against Seattle, the susceptible knee finally buckling to a torn ACL. The decision-making process that led to Griffin playing that day has never fully been explained...
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A little thin, but interesting.
 
Playoffs said:
Washington Redskins @Redskins
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There is very little downside in exercising an option when it is only guaranteed for injury and the player can be cut anytime before the first day of the season.

Think of this when we exercise the fifth year option (2016) on Mercilus after the draft.
 
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