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Jay Gruden

How Hot Should Jay Gruden’s Seat Be In Washington?

In the aftermath of the Washington Capitals’ Stanley Cup breakthrough, I saw a social media post that noted the Capitals were rewarded for sticking with head coach Barry Trotz and imploring the Washington Redskins to take a cue from their neighbors. I wish I could remember who posted it, but it was on Twitter (doesn’t everything noteworthy in D.C. these days come from Twitter?). Redskins head coach Jay Gruden enters his fifth season and is on the hot seat. How hot should that seat be and is this a good comparison?

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Let’s begin with the fact that I think the comparison is sketchy at best. Trotz won over 62 percent of his regular season games. The Capitals’ frustration was about translating regular season dominance into postseason success. Even more specifically, it was about beating the Pittsburgh Penguins, their sport’s signature franchise.

If the Gruden-Trotz comparison were valid, the Redskins would have averaged 10-6 regular seasons over the last four years, gone into the playoffs with first-round byes and found frustration by being consistently knocked off by the eventual Super Bowl champ. Instead, Gruden has averaged seven wins per year, made the postseason one time in four tries and been promptly eliminated in the first round—by a team (Green Bay in 2015) that promptly lost in the second round.

The comparison doesn’t hold water. Maybe that’s why Trotz decided to hold up the Capitals with demands for a new contract and ended up resigning in protest yesterday (the one thing all Washington D.C. institutions, sports and otherwise, can compare to each other in is ceaseless and unnecessary drama).

But just because Jay Gruden isn’t Barry Trotz doesn’t mean the Redskins should be looking for a reason to change coaches. Gruden inherited a rough situation—the organizational culture, always teetering under owner Daniel Synder, had become a toxic mess. If you recall the start of 2014, there was still hope Robert Griffin III could return to his rookie year form of 2012. The fan base was split into warring camps over whether to go with Kirk Cousins or stick with RG3.

Gruden, of course, ended up going with Cousins. Those of us that like (and still do like) RG3 should acknowledge that while the head coach didn’t exactly handle the situation gracefully (repeated public criticisms of Griffin), we can write that off to the frustration of a first-year coach stuck having inherited damaged goods and being hamstrung by the front office in terms of making a personnel change. RG3 and his fans are on stronger ground targeting Mike Shanahan, who ruined the quarterback, rather than Gruden, who just accepted what a lot of us didn’t want to see at the time.

So given that mess and the Redskins’ general incompetence in the Snyder era, the fact Gruden has put the Redskins at least on the cycle of mediocrity has to be seen as a positive. They’re in the group of teams that with between 7-9 regular season games. Sometimes, like 2015, that’s enough to make the playoffs. Other times, it leaves you on the outside looking in, but the fundamental quality of football doesn’t really change.

I’ll be honest—after the disasters of 2013-14 (the last year of Shanahan and the first year of Gruden), watching the Redskins and knowing I have a 50/50 chance to watch a victory, seems like a new Golden Age. And I’m highly skeptical of any future head coach suddenly making this a 10-11 win franchise and a real contender for a Super Bowl.

I also think keeping Gruden around for the full term of his original five-year contract has been good for stability and it sends a good message to future coaching and free agent prospects—that the days of the carousel are over.

What that boils down to is that I think it would be a mistake to put Gruden on a “Playoffs-or-Bust” ultimatum. After the trade for Alex Smith, that would be an understandable reaction, but an understandable reaction is not necessarily a good one. If the ‘Skins collapse, make a change. But if they continue to lurk on the playoff border, it’s time to be real and accept that short of Bill Belichick, there’s probably not anyone else that’s going to do a lot better. And we’ve seen rather vividly in recent years that things could be a whole lot worse.

Are Jobs On The Line For The Redskins The Next Two Weeks?

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The Washington Redskins got everything they needed on Thanksgiving Day. The Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys not only lost, but looked the part of being completely finished. The Eagles appear to have mailed it on Chip Kelly. The Cowboys lost Tony Romo again. If that’s the case, it means the NFC East is a two-team race—the Redskins at 4-6 and the New York Giants at 5-5.

Joe Gibbs Washington Redskins

These two teams go head-to-head on Sunday in FedEx Field. If you couple this game with Washington’s ensuing Monday Night home date with Dallas, is it fair to wonder if the jobs of the head coach and quarterback are on the line?

The Redskins have made admirable progress in a lot of areas. The defense, woeful even in the 2012 NFC East title run, is now in the middle of the league. The offensive line, an absolute train wreck last year, has been strengthened by first-round draft pick Brandon Scherff, the growth of Morgan Moses and the mostly steady health of Trent Williams. There’s a long way to go for this group, as there is for the defense, but units that were once disaster areas are now up to average.

“Average” is what has mostly defined the Redskin football season to this point. They’ve put up some great performances against mediocre competition—home wins against New Orleans, Tampa Bay, St. Louis and Philadelphia. Washington has looked overmatched against Carolina and New England, and in spots like a Thursday Night road loss to the Giants.

Now there’s two consecutive home games against NFC East rivals who are either .500 or worse. If you win both, you’ve got a great shot to win the division. Lose both, and it’s another lost December in the nation’s capital. And that brings us to the jobs of head coach Jay Gruden and quarterback Kirk Cousins.

Gruden rolled the dice with his future shortly before the season started when he benched RG3 and proclaimed Cousins to be the guy. The head coach, who was ready to crush RG3 publicly after a handful of injury-riddled games in 2014, made every excuse possible for Cousins, including an “it was windy” explanation for a poor game against the Jets that drew ridicule even from RG3’s harshest media critics in the Beltway.

As one who doesn’t care for the way Gruden handled the RG3 situation, I can’t ignore the fact that I like what I see from a lot of this team. The positives above are the reason. They look more like a disciplined football team and less like a circus. I’m less sold on Cousins—the nature of the offense makes the quarterback position more about just dumping the ball short to open receivers—but there’s no denying that the quarterback has matured this season and if nothing else, simply having a quarterback who stays healthy allows the team to grow around him.

If you ask me today, I feel like the Redskins have something pretty good developing and I’d bring the Gruden/Cousins ticket back to face a true election year in 2016. If the team sweeps the Cowboys and Giants and at least hangs in the NFC East race, I’m sure that decision becomes a slam dunk. Even a split, while probably fatal to this year’s playoff hopes, would still validate some gradual progress and merit their return.

But lose both, drop to 4-8 and face another cold December watching irrelevant football? That’s another story. I’m a lot more patient than Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, and if I’d be ready to throw in the towel at that point, how much more annoyed would the man who actually makes the decisions be? It’s not unreasonable to think Gruden and Cousins are putting their jobs on the line these next two weeks.

Finding Nice Things To Say About Jay Gruden

I’ve never been a fan of Jay Gruden. As a Redskins fan I was apoplectic when the word he had even interviewed for the head coaching job after the 2013 season and when Gruden got hired, one knowing friend texted me with a heckling “Redskins got their man!”. Another, with more compassion, said simply “I feel for you man.” No, I was never excited about hiring an Arena Football League coach whose NFL resume consisted of being a modestly successful offensive coordinator in Cincinnati.

Joe Gibbs Washington Redskins

Gruden’s record as a head coach is now 6-16, so it would be easy for me to pile on. And as one who likes RG3 and admires his entire family for their military service, it would be an even easier for me to go after a man who so publicly crushed Griffin during his struggles last year and now makes the most appalling excuses for Kirk Cousins (did Gruden really say “it was windy” after the Jets game on Sunday? Yes, he did.).

But I’m not here to crush Jay Gruden. I’m here to point out some good things I see in his stewardship.

*Let’s begin with his offensive design. I like the way Gruden’s pass offense always seems to pop receivers open underneath. It’s perfect for a rookie like Jamison Crowder and when DeSean Jackson gets healthy, it’s great for him, a shifty fast guy who can get yards after the catch. It’s also great for Jordan Reed when he’s healthy, although Reed seems to have RG3’s problem in that injuries tend to find him.

*When Gruden hired Joe Barry as defensive coordinator, I was ready to go crazy. Barry’s background was an assistant on the Detroit Lions’ defensive staff in 2008, the team that went 0-16. It’s not that I thought every single coach on that team, or even every player, was thereby awful. But I thought it absurd that someone would get a promotion based on that (Barry hadn’t even been coordinator). The results through six games suggest that I was wrong, perhaps spectacularly wrong.

Until the second half of the Jets game, the Redskins’ defense had been very solid throughout the season. They play disciplined. They tackle in the open field. They’ve survived even with injuries at corner to DeAngelo Hall and Chris Culliver. I barely recognize this defense and that’s a great thing. If this holds up Gruden’s hiring of Barry is going to be a big-time win for which the head coach deserves credit.

*The general disorderly play of the last two seasons seems to be cleaned up. The Redskins still commit some annoying penalties, so there is more work to do. But it’s not as much as an epidemic as it’s been the last couple seasons. I trace things like these directly to coaching, so I’ll give Gruden the credit.

I don’t know if Jay Gruden is going to survive. In spite of what I’ve written here, I’m not even sure if he should. What I do know is that no organization finds success by constantly purging its coaches. Jay Gruden isn’t an easy guy to like. He acts like a blowhard in his press conferences. He plays favorites at the quarterback position. He’s at where he’s at solely because of his last name.

As endorsements go, this one isn’t exactly a ringing one. But he’s done some things well over the last year-plus and those of us who don’t like the way he’s handled the RG3 situation shouldn’t lose sight of that as Gruden coaches for his job and the stability of the franchise we love over these next ten games, particularly Sunday against Tampa Bay.

The Continuing Dysfunction Of The Washington Redskins

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There’s one thing I can say about my beloved Washington Redskins—they may always let me down, but they’ll never abandon me. Even in February, they’re still making news and keeping themselves on the frontburner. So when I should be following college hoops, the NBA and the NHL, it’s the Redskins who are today’s topic.

Head coach Jay Gruden announced RG3 will enter training camp as the clear #1 starter. No open competition as previously promised, and it begs the question of whether the Washington Redskins have any idea what they’re doing as an organization.

Washington Redskins historyThe purpose of this is to focus on organizational dysfunction, not one’s opinion of RG3, but you can’t separate the two completely. Regular readers of TheSportsNotebook.com have read my previous posts on all facets of his game and career, but for anyone new, I’ll sum it up as concisely as I can:

*I am huge fan of Robert Griffin III, not simply because he’s the quarterback of my favorite team, but because I simply like him and admire his family for their service to this country. I think he’s good guy and has gotten an unfair rap in the media for missteps that are fairly minor.

*I think criticisms of his play the last two years fail to consider that he’s had a torn ACL and dislocated ankle, each extremely serious injuries. The last two seasons he was healthy were 2011 and 2012—and he has a Heisman Trophy and NFL Rookie of the Year to show for it.

*The flip side, is that I’m extremely dubious that he can stay healthy. You need only look at his physical build to understand why.

*I’m also really concerned about where he’s at mentally right now. RG3 himself used the phrase “at war with myself” to discuss trying to decide whether to take off and run or to stay in the pocket. The consequence was that he looked extremely tentative and the repeated poundings he took were more unsafe than anything he did outside the pocket.

*The result of this is that right now, if I was coaching the Redskins and had to go win a football game, I would start Colt McCoy. I just don’t feel like RG3 is in a good place and I fear he never will be again, at least not in Washington.

That brings us to our current context. After a season in which Jay Gruden repeatedly crushed RG3 in public, benched him and all but shouted to the world “I don’t like this guy”, the organization sent out an offseason letter to season-ticket holders not even mentioning the quarterback as one of the team’s building blocks for next year. No quarterback was listed in a group that included Alfred Morris, Ryan Kerrigan and others.

All of that clearly suggests a team—which has a new general manager in Scot McCloughan—going in a different direction. Then comes the events of this week in which the head coach puts himself clearly behind Griffin as the starter.

Whatever you think should happen with RG3 and the quarterback position, all of this suggests a team that doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going. That’s been the case all too often, especially with this quarterback. It’s an inability to make one core decision and then follow it up with subordinate decisions that are consistent. It’s called “dysfunction”, which is the most commonly used term outsiders use to describe the Washington Redskins organization.

It goes back to when RG3 was drafted in the spring of 2012. Daniel Snyder and Bruce Allen wanted him. Mike Shanahan didn’t. So after picking a multi-talented quarterback with a unique skillset, the Redskins follow it up by drafting a more conventional quarterback in Kirk Cousins the same year. That’s dysfunction.

RG3 came into the league at a time when more quarterbacks were starting to run and the read-option was starting to be used at the NFL level for the first time, at least on any consistent basis. Tim Tebow did it in his famous run with the Denver Broncos in 2011. Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick relied heavily on their legs. And though Andrew Luck doesn’t run the read-option, he also relied on his running (and still does) far more than is generally realized.

What was clear when it came to quarterbacks like RG3, was that if you were going to build around them it to be an organizational commitment at every level. You needed to still an offensive system tailored to his talents, rather than jamming him into an orthodox NFL set. You would need to acquire a backup quarterback of a similar skillset, to ensure continuity in the case of injury.

Given this, the Redskins had two choices in the spring of 2012. One was to stay at #6 in the draft, invest in defense with their early picks, and then take Kirk Cousins later. Another was to trade up, draft RG3 and go all in. What wouldn’t work would be to first take RG3, then take Cousins and create organizational inconsistency. Naturally, that’s exactly what the Redskins did.

If I were in charge, I would re-sign Colt McCoy, who has good mobility and can also run read-option. Make it clear that this is the offensive system. Have an open competition for the quarterback position. If RG3’s head is in the right place, he’ll clearly win it. If he doesn’t, a change of system won’t be required for McCoy, and you have the option (no pun intended) of making quarterback changes during the season without wholesale disruption.

That’s what I’d do. But what I want more than anything is for the Washington Redskins to decide what they’re about offensively. Trying to turn RG3 into a pure pocket passer and forgoing the use of his incredible talents elsewhere is just stupid. If you don’t want to use his skillsets, just let him go and quit the public bashing. If you do want him, then go all-in and make a commitment. The dysfunction has become tiring and unfair to everyone involved.

Message To Jay Gruden: No New Quarterbacks; Work With What You’ve Got

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The rumors are rife that Washington Redskins head coach Jay Gruden not only wants to move on from Robert Griffin III, but that he would prefer to bring in an entirely new quarterback, also moving on from Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy—at least as a starter. The message of owner Daniel Snyder to this should be simple—enough is enough. Make it work with what you have.

Gruden came to the Redskins with a reputation as a quarterback genius, something entirely undeserved and based on the premise that his work in Cincinnati had somehow turned Andy Dalton into the next Dan Marino. In reality, while Gruden was a competent offensive coordinator in Cincy, he was also the second-best coordinator on his own staff. The best was defensive guru Mike Zimmer, who got the Minnesota Vikings head job.

But deserved or not, Gruden’s reputation got the job and he was hired with the mandate to develop RG3. After four starts, Gruden decided that wasn’t going to work. Now—if the rumors are true—he’s apparently decided that a third-round pick in Cousins can’t work, and that another former first-rounder, in McCoy can’t work either.

This quarterback carousel simply has to stop. Bad teams and bad organizations—and my beloved Washington Redskins are most definitely both—have a tendency to go for quick fixes, which means either change the head coach or change the quarterback. In reality, the Redskins problems are much deeper.

To watch the Redskins is to see a team that looks undisciplined and lacks cohesion. They pile up penalties on special teams, consistently creating field position problems. They don’t make tackles in the open field. They commit false starts in the red zone. These problems all pre-date Gruden and he did not create them. After three-quarters of a season, it’s also apparent he hasn’t been able to fix them.

When RG3 was a rookie, his skills were transcendent enough to overcome all that. Since his ACL tear at the end of that year, the subsequent ankle dislocation this year and general loss of confidence and identity, those flaws in the rest of the team are on full display.

Fixing these basic problems has to be the priority for this organization. Any discussion of new personnel needs to focus on the offensive line and the secondary. The focus of the coaching staff needs to be making sure the next edition of the Redskins looks more like a disciplined football team and less like chaos on display.

It’s a cop-out for Gruden or anyone else to go around demanding a new quarterback, at least for now. If the head coach fixes the problems mentioned, gets this team to 8-8, and nothing resolves itself at quarterback, then maybe he can have a new toy at the QB position. Right now, he needs to eat his vegetables first and build the defense, the offensive line and the general team discipline.

There’s a myth that you can’t win in the NFL without a really good quarterback. The people at ProFootballFocus.com watch film and grade every player at every position. The grade of RG3—a poor one—still exceeds that of Brian Hoyer in Cleveland and Matthew Stafford in Detroit. Those teams are a combined 15-9, and that’s with Hoyer possibly now losing his job to Johnny Manziel. The reason? Both of those teams play defense.

So it’s time for Jay Gruden to live up to his reputation, or at least a small part of it. I don’t care who he starts, be it RG3, Colt, or Cousins. I don’t care if it’s some combination of the three. Heck, I don’t care if he wants to use them as the shuttle to bring in plays from the sidelines. What I want to see is him figure out to make it work. And by “work”, I just mean win as many as you lose. Not even make the playoffs. Those aren’t exactly high expectations.

The message “make it work with what you have” applies to those of us who are critics of the head coach as well. This was a hire that I hated from the moment it was made, and there’s a big part of me that just wants to cut the cord after one year. But that isn’t going to be the answer either. The tone needs to be set throughout this organization and fan base—at least for 2015, Jay Gruden is our coach, and RG3/Colt/Cousins are the quarterbacks. And within that framework we have to win eight games by fixing the aspects of a football team that don’t get the headlines.

Message To Jay Gruden: No New Quarterbacks; Work With What You've Got

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The rumors are rife that Washington Redskins head coach Jay Gruden not only wants to move on from Robert Griffin III, but that he would prefer to bring in an entirely new quarterback, also moving on from Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy—at least as a starter. The message of owner Daniel Snyder to this should be simple—enough is enough. Make it work with what you have.

Gruden came to the Redskins with a reputation as a quarterback genius, something entirely undeserved and based on the premise that his work in Cincinnati had somehow turned Andy Dalton into the next Dan Marino. In reality, while Gruden was a competent offensive coordinator in Cincy, he was also the second-best coordinator on his own staff. The best was defensive guru Mike Zimmer, who got the Minnesota Vikings head job.
But deserved or not, Gruden’s reputation got the job and he was hired with the mandate to develop RG3. After four starts, Gruden decided that wasn’t going to work. Now—if the rumors are true—he’s apparently decided that a third-round pick in Cousins can’t work, and that another former first-rounder, in McCoy can’t work either.
This quarterback carousel simply has to stop. Bad teams and bad organizations—and my beloved Washington Redskins are most definitely both—have a tendency to go for quick fixes, which means either change the head coach or change the quarterback. In reality, the Redskins problems are much deeper.
To watch the Redskins is to see a team that looks undisciplined and lacks cohesion. They pile up penalties on special teams, consistently creating field position problems. They don’t make tackles in the open field. They commit false starts in the red zone. These problems all pre-date Gruden and he did not create them. After three-quarters of a season, it’s also apparent he hasn’t been able to fix them.
When RG3 was a rookie, his skills were transcendent enough to overcome all that. Since his ACL tear at the end of that year, the subsequent ankle dislocation this year and general loss of confidence and identity, those flaws in the rest of the team are on full display.
Fixing these basic problems has to be the priority for this organization. Any discussion of new personnel needs to focus on the offensive line and the secondary. The focus of the coaching staff needs to be making sure the next edition of the Redskins looks more like a disciplined football team and less like chaos on display.
It’s a cop-out for Gruden or anyone else to go around demanding a new quarterback, at least for now. If the head coach fixes the problems mentioned, gets this team to 8-8, and nothing resolves itself at quarterback, then maybe he can have a new toy at the QB position. Right now, he needs to eat his vegetables first and build the defense, the offensive line and the general team discipline.
There’s a myth that you can’t win in the NFL without a really good quarterback. The people at ProFootballFocus.com watch film and grade every player at every position. The grade of RG3—a poor one—still exceeds that of Brian Hoyer in Cleveland and Matthew Stafford in Detroit. Those teams are a combined 15-9, and that’s with Hoyer possibly now losing his job to Johnny Manziel. The reason? Both of those teams play defense.

So it’s time for Jay Gruden to live up to his reputation, or at least a small part of it. I don’t care who he starts, be it RG3, Colt, or Cousins. I don’t care if it’s some combination of the three. Heck, I don’t care if he wants to use them as the shuttle to bring in plays from the sidelines. What I want to see is him figure out to make it work. And by “work”, I just mean win as many as you lose. Not even make the playoffs. Those aren’t exactly high expectations.
The message “make it work with what you have” applies to those of us who are critics of the head coach as well. This was a hire that I hated from the moment it was made, and there’s a big part of me that just wants to cut the cord after one year. But that isn’t going to be the answer either. The tone needs to be set throughout this organization and fan base—at least for 2015, Jay Gruden is our coach, and RG3/Colt/Cousins are the quarterbacks. And within that framework we have to win eight games by fixing the aspects of a football team that don’t get the headlines.

If RG3’s Time Has Come Could Jay Gruden At Least Have Some Class?

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All of us who are fans of the Washington Redskins, and also love Robert Griffin III, can see the reality of the situation. RG3 simply looks like a young man lost. He’s not using his legs to any kind of positive effect, and after a career that has two ACL tears and a dislocated ankle, it’s not hard to figure out why. If the Redskins truly had to win a football game right now, there would be no good argument for starting anyone other than Colt McCoy.

My question is this—whenever this change comes, is it asking too much that Jay Gruden not act like the back end of a horse when dealing with RG3? So far, the head coach is failing that test.

I don’t fault Gruden for calling out RG3 a week ago at his press conference for Griffin’s comments about his teammates. While the overall context of RG3’s remarks—backed up by reporters who were there—is that Griffin didn’t mean them as badly as they came off, the fact is the comments were incredibly poorly worded. And, at least in the loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, RG3 had performed vastly worse than his teammates.

But even in delivering this rebuke, Gruden went too far. His opening rebuttal—that the quarterback needs to worry about himself and the head coach would worry about everyone else—was on target. Then Gruden started going into a laundry list of everything else RG3 was doing wrong. This was going too far, and even the head coach knew it, walking back his comments later in the week.

Then, prior to Sunday’s game in San Francisco, Gruden again decided to go after his quarterback. The coach said “He’s auditioned long enough…the clock’s ticking.” This was simply ridiculous. We could start by pointing out that RG3 had played only three full games when the comment was made. We could further point out that RG3 was actually Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2012—it’s not as though he’s completely unaccomplished in the NFL. Like, for example, the current Washington Redskins head coach. And the comment came off like Gruden was deciding to pile on.

What the issue really is though, is this—Robert Griffin III is not a “bust”, in the sense that Ryan Leaf was a bust, or Sam Bradford has been a bust. Robert Griffin III got hurt. Before that happened, he was easily the best quarterback in the rookie class of 2012, lifting a moribund franchise to a division title and having the Seattle Seahawks in a 14-0 hole in the playoffs before he finally took the injury from which he has yet to recover. Getting hurt is a big disappointment, but it doesn’t make you a bust.

Moreover, Griffin’s injury was aggravated by the decision of the Redskins—or at least their then-head coach Mike Shanahan, to leave him in the playoff game when an entire nation watching on television could see he was hurt. If this were another industry, Shanahan would be on the hook for culpable negligence. If an organization’s personnel is responsible for a player’s current problems, is it too much to ask they at least not publicly humiliate the player as the pretext for making a change?

Finally, Gruden is the one who has declined to use Griffin’s full range of skills in his offensive game-planning. In yesterday’s game I counted only four players where Griffin was put on the move—not even running, but just rolling out. Everything else was a vanilla dropback route. Even McCoy, in his great Monday Night start in Dallas last month, was allowed to run the read-option and roll out. Why not Griffin?

What everything smacks of—from the public beatdowns to the deliberate refusal to use the quarterback’s full range of talents—is that Gruden has essentially mailed it in on RG3.

RG3 has looked to me, in all his starts, as a quarterback who has lost his confidence and even lost his identity, unsure in the pocket about whether he should run or hold on to the ball. He admitted as much, saying over a week ago that he often feels “at war with myself.” That’s not exactly a good recipe for success in the NFL.

It’s for those reasons that I think RG3 is just in a very bad mental rut that won’t disappear anytime soon and that you have to go with McCoy if you’re serious about winning on Sunday. If the organization wants to give Griffin the rest of the season to try and right himself, I understand that decision. But if that’s the case, then really let him play.

And whatever happens, if the time comes to go with McCoy (which I believe it will) or even to cut ties with RG3 entirely (as I believe might be necessary for both sides), I’m going to repeat my question—is it asking too much that the head coach not behave boorishly in doing it. Let RG3 rebuild his career, either in Washington or elsewhere, but don’t ever forget how hard he competed, or that it was an avoidable injury that did him in.

If RG3's Time Has Come Could Jay Gruden At Least Have Some Class?

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All of us who are fans of the Washington Redskins, and also love Robert Griffin III, can see the reality of the situation. RG3 simply looks like a young man lost. He’s not using his legs to any kind of positive effect, and after a career that has two ACL tears and a dislocated ankle, it’s not hard to figure out why. If the Redskins truly had to win a football game right now, there would be no good argument for starting anyone other than Colt McCoy.

My question is this—whenever this change comes, is it asking too much that Jay Gruden not act like the back end of a horse when dealing with RG3? So far, the head coach is failing that test.
I don’t fault Gruden for calling out RG3 a week ago at his press conference for Griffin’s comments about his teammates. While the overall context of RG3’s remarks—backed up by reporters who were there—is that Griffin didn’t mean them as badly as they came off, the fact is the comments were incredibly poorly worded. And, at least in the loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, RG3 had performed vastly worse than his teammates.
But even in delivering this rebuke, Gruden went too far. His opening rebuttal—that the quarterback needs to worry about himself and the head coach would worry about everyone else—was on target. Then Gruden started going into a laundry list of everything else RG3 was doing wrong. This was going too far, and even the head coach knew it, walking back his comments later in the week.
Then, prior to Sunday’s game in San Francisco, Gruden again decided to go after his quarterback. The coach said “He’s auditioned long enough…the clock’s ticking.” This was simply ridiculous. We could start by pointing out that RG3 had played only three full games when the comment was made. We could further point out that RG3 was actually Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2012—it’s not as though he’s completely unaccomplished in the NFL. Like, for example, the current Washington Redskins head coach. And the comment came off like Gruden was deciding to pile on.
What the issue really is though, is this—Robert Griffin III is not a “bust”, in the sense that Ryan Leaf was a bust, or Sam Bradford has been a bust. Robert Griffin III got hurt. Before that happened, he was easily the best quarterback in the rookie class of 2012, lifting a moribund franchise to a division title and having the Seattle Seahawks in a 14-0 hole in the playoffs before he finally took the injury from which he has yet to recover. Getting hurt is a big disappointment, but it doesn’t make you a bust.
Moreover, Griffin’s injury was aggravated by the decision of the Redskins—or at least their then-head coach Mike Shanahan, to leave him in the playoff game when an entire nation watching on television could see he was hurt. If this were another industry, Shanahan would be on the hook for culpable negligence. If an organization’s personnel is responsible for a player’s current problems, is it too much to ask they at least not publicly humiliate the player as the pretext for making a change?
Finally, Gruden is the one who has declined to use Griffin’s full range of skills in his offensive game-planning. In yesterday’s game I counted only four players where Griffin was put on the move—not even running, but just rolling out. Everything else was a vanilla dropback route. Even McCoy, in his great Monday Night start in Dallas last month, was allowed to run the read-option and roll out. Why not Griffin?

What everything smacks of—from the public beatdowns to the deliberate refusal to use the quarterback’s full range of talents—is that Gruden has essentially mailed it in on RG3.
RG3 has looked to me, in all his starts, as a quarterback who has lost his confidence and even lost his identity, unsure in the pocket about whether he should run or hold on to the ball. He admitted as much, saying over a week ago that he often feels “at war with myself.” That’s not exactly a good recipe for success in the NFL.
It’s for those reasons that I think RG3 is just in a very bad mental rut that won’t disappear anytime soon and that you have to go with McCoy if you’re serious about winning on Sunday. If the organization wants to give Griffin the rest of the season to try and right himself, I understand that decision. But if that’s the case, then really let him play.
And whatever happens, if the time comes to go with McCoy (which I believe it will) or even to cut ties with RG3 entirely (as I believe might be necessary for both sides), I’m going to repeat my question—is it asking too much that the head coach not behave boorishly in doing it. Let RG3 rebuild his career, either in Washington or elsewhere, but don’t ever forget how hard he competed, or that it was an avoidable injury that did him in.