The ruination of Robert Griffin III

Ineffective coaching has stifled RGIII’s growth and put his career at a crossroads.

While Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III has returned to practice since sustaining yet another injury, the truth is that there had been damage done to him long before he left the last preseason game.

Why say this? Because it’s clear that the coaching staff has no interest in putting him in a position to succeed. Furthermore, its insistence on shoving him into a scheme to which he is ill-suited to play is causing him harm both physically and developmentally.

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There are plenty of signs that head coach Jay Gruden just isn’t willing to bend on what he wants Griffin to do. Behind a horrifically inept offensive on Thursday night, Gruden and offensive coordinator Sean McVay kept calling passes that required Griffin to hang in the pocket and deliver throws.

The reason this sticks out so badly is what happened after Griffin left in the second quarter with what was termed a “stinger.” First off, Colt McCoy came into the game, and the plays were immediately runs and bootlegs in order to get him out of harm’s way. The same thing when Kirk Cousins saw time.

It would have been one thing if, as many starting quarterbacks do, Griffin ran one or two drives and then exited the game. Sticking to the game plan Washington had dreamed up could have been done without getting Griffin pounded into the pathetic excuse for turf that passes for the field at FedEx Field.

However, for reasons best known only to McVay and Gruden, Griffin was in the game for four drives, two longer than he should have been – even if there was a competent line protecting him.

The result was six huge hits, a concussion and the aforementioned stinger. While there are plenty of people to blame for the debacle, it comes down, first and foremost, to Gruden and his continuing unwillingness to use Griffin in any logical manner.

We shouldn’t be shocked, though. This is how Gruden has functioned since arriving in Washington. Instead of trying to mold an offense around what Griffin could do, he’s tried to reinvent his quarterback as a slightly more mobile Andy Dalton.

It hasn’t worked. And while you can place some of the blame – and Thursday night’s sacks – on Griffin and his own obstinacy, there’s also something to be said for the inflexibility of the coach. When you have a quarterback who is struggling to get the ball out quickly, you help him move away from the pressure and buy him time. You call some run plays to keep the defense honest.

Thursday night was somewhat unusual because the offensive line was so porous that nobody this side of Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers would have been quick or agile enough to get out of the way.

Again, we know the run plays and bootlegs are in the playbook – we saw McCoy and Cousins run them. And it’s not that they are too complex for Griffin to run, because he did it in college at Baylor.

A young quarterback needs support, something it seems Griffin has had from owner Dan Snyder but never his coaches. He clashed with Mike Shanahan, and he appears unable to get on the same page as Gruden. For his own part, Gruden has long been rumored to have Cousins as his first choice, and has been publically critical of his current starter.

This is no way to guide a quarterback to greatness, but it’s a great way to lose his trust and shake his confidence. How can he possibly believe a word you say, or take you seriously, when you constantly complain about him to the media? Especially when the interceptions you’re talking about aren’t totally his fault, he has no defense and his offensive line is dreck?

This has happened now for two years, first with Shanahan and now with Gruden. It’s baffling that Gruden got the job when it’s clear he had no plan of what to do with Griffin or how to best use his abilities. That is unless Snyder wants him to break Griffin (and he’s doing a marvelous job right now) and mold him into a whole different quarterback, in which case how stupid was the massive trade to bring him to Washington in the first place?

Again, this isn’t to say Griffin lacks blame here. He refuses to avoid the big hit, he needs to continue to speed up his process, and his decision-making is still shaky. However, he was a dynamic playmaker in his rookie season, something that never returned after his leg injury in the playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

A lot of that has been handling. He was put back in a bad situation after an initial injury, talking his way back onto the field when the coach should have known better. Then he was rushed back to play the following season when a more cautious approach might have been wiser. He never looked 100 percent, and didn’t seem to fully heal until the end of the season.

Enter Gruden, who has continued to try and force a square peg into a round hole. It’s an old-school approach which looks foolish in light of success by Cam Newton, Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick elsewhere. While Griffin has different limitations (and a much different body type) than those three quarterbacks, their coaches did a much better job of putting them into a position to succeed and they all have to varying degrees.

You really have to wonder at this point if Griffin isn’t better off elsewhere, with a coach and system built to fit his abilities and who will help him overcome his flaws. As it stands right now, the physical pounding behind this offensive line and lack of support from the coaching staff have likely chipped away at his confidence and abilities.

It looks like Griffin is well enough to play in the Week 3 preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens. One hopes that this time out, the coaching staff pays attention to what is going on during the game and tries to do a much better job protecting its franchise quarterback.

As it stands, all the coaches have done so far is find new and different ways to make things worse.

Andrew Garda is a freelance writer primarily covering NFL football, but following everything else. A member of the Pro Football Writers Association, he is a contributing NFL writer for FanSided, Sports on Earth, Footballguys.com and Dish Network. He also co-hosts the Garda & Griffin NFL Podcast on Itunes, Podbean and Stitcher. Follow him on Twitter at @andrew_garda.

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