RG3 Can Be Redskins Rising Tide

April 26, 2012 could well be the day the tide finally came in for the Washington Redskins.

Sometime around 8:30 pm on Thursday evening, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will officially announce that Robert Griffin III, Quarterback, Baylor University, has been selected by the Redskins.

There will be much rejoicing, and I will be among those letting my inner child dance. Anyone who has lived the burgundy and gold life for any length of time will understand.

Sure, there are “ifs” involved—in the real world there always are.  As people are quick to remind us, there are no sure things. 

So let's deal with them right off the top.

Yes, RG3 played at Baylor, and yes, it is true that no great NFL quarterback has ever come out of the Big 12 Conference. There are familiar Big 12 names—Vince Young, Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy—but no Big 12 quarterback has ever established a championship or Pro Bowl legacy in the NFL.

So while one can opt to project from that RG3 will continue the trend, I submit that there is another wy to look at it.  Before Jerry Rice no one talked much about the SWAC either.

Great players are not defined by where they played in college.

Then there is the eye ball test. This one I admit will linger for a while, even for some of those among us who are "all in" on RG3. The first time I watched one of his ubiquitous highlight reels I had the same reaction I got when I first studied the St. Louis Rams' Sam Bradford two years ago—the man ain’t big. In fact, he tends to thin. Those runners legs, and that track-star body in general, may not hold up.

Griffin's measureables, 6' 2 3/8" ht., 225 lbs., are fine on paper. But the eye test suggests a lithe, sinewy athlete and not necessarily an NFL stud. With the way pro quarterbacks get hit these days, and the way NFL pass pockets buzz with linebackers and defensive linemen creating mayhem at knee level, you would kind of like your franchise quarterback to have trees for legs, a la Ben Roethlisberger. RG3, for all his world-class speed and athleticism, has sprinters legs.

For a guy who will be standing and moving in and around in traffic as much as he is going to be, particularly early in his career, and who is going to be taking his fair share of big hits and in-traffic takedowns, that lean body and hurdlers legs are going to be at risk. There is simply no way around it. I expect I will not be the only Redskins fan cringing every time he goes down in a pile. 

So yes ... there are ifs.

Happily, as I dug deeper and started researching him in earnest, I discovered that what sets Robert Griffin III apart, and makes the cost the Redskins paid to secure his services more than palatable, are not primarily his eye-popping athletic skills and measurables. Although they are real, and they are spectacular.

No, what sets this guy apart is what he has inside ...

Sean's Gone

There was no good way to say it when it happened.

There is no good way to say it now.

But this is how Sean Taylor's death struck me then,  

so I will continue to make this silent tribute

for as long as the feelings remain.

  

(Reprinted from November 28, 2007)

It’s not a long drive to my son’s high school, maybe 15 minutes.

Most mornings, we share sleepy wise cracks—which of us looks worse; whose day projects out the bigger pain; the lameness of a certain radio commercial.

Sometimes we talk daily routine—remembering to turn in an order form; calling if he needs to be picked up; the logistics of an upcoming outing with friends.

Sometimes we talk a little sports. Redskins, mostly.

Once in a while, as events dictate, we talk real life—there will be other girls; they just discovered an Earth-like planet 20 light-years away; it’s junior year partner, these grades count.

Tuesday morning, we rode in silence.

He’d had a strange look on his face as he came down the hall from the living room, where the morning news was playing, when we readied to leave the house. His voice had a flatness to it when he spoke.

“Sean’s gone.”

I wasn’t fully awake—I didn’t understand. Then I saw the look in his eyes, the awful news story I had fallen asleep thinking about came flooding back, and I understood only too well. I don’t remember now if it was raining as we headed out into the dark, but it always will be in my memory.

As we were pulling out into the road a minute later, a voice on the car radio confirmed the reality.

“Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor died this morning from a gunshot wound suffered in his home …”

We drove in silence, staring straight ahead.

I don’t really know if the time it took to get to the school took forever, or if it flashed by in an instant. Time has a strange quality to it in times of stress. What I do recall is the unsettling jumble of disjointed thoughts, feelings and impressions...

Synaptic Shotgun: 3-1 Washington Redskins

I don't get to write very often these days. But there's so much to write it's driving me crazy keeping it bottled up. So I'm going to try the shotgun-style thing for a while. Again.

In no particular order, and definitely not exhaustively ...

DC Jim Haslett

Few doubted Haslett earlier or more pointedly than I when the Redskins brought him in to implement the transition from a 4-3 to 3-4 defense last year. And, through the end of last season I had seen little to change my mind. But fair is fair, and credit where it's due:

Mr. Haslett, the product you have put on the field so far in 2011 has been a revelation. I am happy with the game-planning, happy with the rotation, happy with the halftime adjustments, happy even with almost all the playcalling. My only nitpick is with still too-often telegraphed blitzes that don't get there. Even then, I understand that kind of second-guessing is easy for armchair coordinators. And I recognize that the view from the living room is a little different than the view from the sidelines. In the same way, for instance, as planning to get in shape, and actually getting in shape, are a little different.*

Hell of a job so far. For the record, I would like nothing more than to see you continue to rub it in the faces of doubters like me for a long time to come.

QB Rex Grossman

... is perhaps the only 3-1 quarterback in NFL history to garner a lower approval rating in his own home town than the sitting President. Well, there is nothing like raising the bar on preseason team expectations to make everyone forget that the current trigger man was never going to be more than a placeholder to begin with. Crawl a couple games above .500 and suddenly it's not "rebuilding year," we're talking Super Bowl.

Sigh.

But back to Rex...

2-0 Redskins Stare Opportunity in Face

Two short weeks ago, the 2-0 Washington Redskins were viewed by the football-watching world as an afterthought. Heading into tonight's Monday Night Football showdown with their arch-rival Dallas Cowboys, however, the burgundy and gold are suddenly a sexy story.

Like the emerging 3-0 Detroit Lions and Buffalo "Really?" Bills, the Redskins quick start has forced people to sit up and take notice.

It started in week one with their surprisingly convincing, 28-14 home win over divisional nemesis the New York Giants. In that game, the Redskins were, quite simply, the better team. Forget the "Giants were injured" angle. If you watched the NFL at all this week, you know about "any given Sunday." The Giants had owned the Redskins, for a very long time, and no one would have been surprised had said ownage continued. 

It did not. Emphatically.

And it was more than "just" starting 1-0, by the way.  In that game the Redskins re-vitalized defense came up with a play that, it says here, will be recorded in unofficial lore as the Turning Point. Rookie draft pick. Blue collar. Deflected pass, returned for stadium-rocking touchdown. Shades of  Hogeboom and Grant (Wham! Bam! It's the Redskins!).

Oh, I know...very different stages. Just planting that flag in the ground here and now.

Then, in week two, the Redskins won a game that they would have lost in recent years—a game they dominated in every way except on the scoreboard. How many times have we seen it over the past generation ... the Redskins domintate time of possession, yardage, the run of play in general ... only to come up short on the one stat that, at the end of the day, anyone really cares about—the scoreboard.

In the NFL it's about finishing, and for 20 years that has been the one thing the Redksins have not been able to do. But last week, in crunch time, it was the Redskins who made the big stop. It was the Redskins who converted the big third down (and fourth for that matter).

And last week, for a refereshing change, it was the other team feeling they "let one slip away."

Redskins 22, Cardinals 21. 

Think there isn't a big difference between 2-0 and 1-1? Just ask Dallas.