Ouch! All three articles sort of pound the same message.
This one... is... particularly ouchy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...751-f032898f2dbc_story.html?tid=pm_sports_pop
Robert Griffin III used to be his team’s most uplifting player, but he is becoming a weight, maybe even a burden. Where is that fresh kid with the unbeatable combination of modesty and limitlessness?
In his place is a player who’s coming off as an unteachable know-it-all. The guy has played just 22 games, and into that time he has packed a few random stabs at semi-greatness,
followed by a lot of unseemly power machinations, and drivel about being a leader, without yet mastering his craft.
A second-year quarterback with the owner on speed dial is calling all the shots for the Washington football club, and what they’ve got to show for it is a 2-5 mark, and a strong whiff of locker room discontent.
This is a team with many problems, of which Griffin is only one — defense, special teams, coaching, chemistry, all of it is to blame. But there is no looking away from the fact Griffin’s poor play has been critical, and more than that,
he has created fundamental tension on an offense that is disjointed from catering to him and his operatic personal demands about how he wants to play.
“I don’t get the sense that they all agree on what he should be doing or shouldn’t be doing in that offense,” former NFL quarterback turned ESPN analyst Tim Hasselbeck said. “I don’t know how to else to say it. It doesn’t seem like they’re on the same page with that stuff.”
Griffin is to a certain extent the victim of inflated expectations, but that’s his own fault: He’s never tempered them, or seemed to understand how much he had left to learn after his extraordinary rookie year. He insisted in the offseason he wanted the club to alter its use of him and make him a pocket passer.
But Hasselbeck observed that when you examine his numbers from last season more closely, minus the flare of charisma, what you saw were some very ordinary figures when it came to that skill: “Robert had played one season, and in half of his starts he threw for under 210 yards.”
The fact is, Griffin remains a highly unfinished player.
His progress as decision-maker did not keep pace with his body. It was great feat when he recovered from offseason knee surgery in record time, and some of his struggles this season can be blamed on that setback, which affected his accuracy and deprived him of valuable offseason work.
But some of what’s plaguing him now is not physical, but a basic lack of development. That was apparent after a loss to the Cowboys on Oct. 16.
“I’m just really focusing on being the playmaker that I know I can be and not letting anybody else tell me how to play this game,” he said.
A second-year guy doesn’t want anyone telling him how to play this game? It’s the statement of someone who has perhaps not been as open to learning as he should have been. According to Hasselbeck,
one problem with this Redskins offense is that Griffin doesn’t seem to have graduated to the next level of decision-making. He is not scanning the field and responding to what defenses show him.
“They don’t have him at the line of scrimmage adjusting protections,” Hasselback observed.
