Whoa!
Come on, people.
Can we please pump the brakes a little bit on the incessant criticism of Browns quarterback Robert Griffin III regarding his quick, in-and-out performance in Fridaynight’s 17-11 loss to the Green Bay Packers in the preseason opener for both teams?
Thank you.
Now that we’re all at a complete stop and are able to take a breath and gather our thoughts, we need to take a realistic look at Griffin, which is something we like to do on this website with all players, all coaches and all situations. That’s the only way you can approach them. Anything else is hearsay, innuendo and wishful thinking.
And when we do, we see one glaring fact that immediately jumps out at us. You can’t miss it. It’s so big that it blots out the sun.
It is the fact that Griffin did not play last season. Oh, he played, all right, in that he was technically a member of the Washington Redskins, but he did not appear at all in a regular-season game. Not one.
Instead, he played only in practices and only on the show team, which shows the offense and defense what the next opponent will throw at them. And he played mostly as a defensive back and not a quarterback.
If you were the Heisman Trophy winner in 2011 and the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, how would that make you feel? Do you think it might have taken your once overflowing amount of confidence and dumped it all out onto the ground like wastewater, making you perceive yourself as a loser?
Yeah, probably so.
Then there’s the physical part. Is there the possibility that Griffin might have gotten a little – or, more likely, a lot – rusty?
Yeah, probably so on that one, too. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have one of Browns ball boys follow Griffin around with some grease, lubricating oil, a wire brush, a package of sand paper and a can of rust-inhibiting paint.
Griffin was that rusty. Moreover, he’s still pretty rusty.
Certainly, there are a lot of things Griffin didn’t do right against the Packers, but he was just getting back up on the bike and learning to ride again. He was never going to look like the RG 3 of 2012.
We should expect him to make some strides in Thursday night’s second preseason game against the Atlanta Falcons at FirstEnergy Stadium, but at the same time, we should also expect him to still be a little wobbly and unsure of himself. That’s just the way it is. He started with tons of rust, so it will take a while to get it all off. When he is rust-free, then and only then can Griffin start developing into the quarterback he can be at this stage of his career, whatever and whomever that is.
So head coach Hue Jackson and assistant head coach/offense Pep Hamilton just need to keep working hard on Griffin, and he just needs to keep working hard as well, absorbing anything and everything they’re telling him as they coach him up.
By just after 11 p.m. on Aug. 26, when the Browns have finished their Week 3 game at Tampa Bay – the dress rehearsal for the regular season – we’ll know a whole heckuva lot more about Griffin in terms of where he is and how far he still needs to go.
But that’s 12 days away, and plenty of stuff – both good and bad – can happen in that time, and no doubt will.
As you have read here, I have hope for the chances of Griffin succeeding at least to some degree because of who he is and, perhaps even more importantly, who his coaches are. There are no guarantees either way, though.
Let’s simply stand back, take it a day at a time and see where it leads us with RG 3.
