Close Your Eyes and Pretend None of This Ever Happened

So it seems like all is well, people, go back to your nostalgic cocoon of 2012.

The Redskins clipped the disorganized and mistake prone Eagles by a FG last Sunday. With some help from the NFL’s “Don’t-Even-Breathe-On-The-QB” Rules. With some more help from Cody Parkey.

And…. hallelujah…. Robert Griffin III did not play like utter crap. So let’s go ahead and rubber stamp another go at making this whole thing work in 2015.

Geezuz. Are people for real on this?

Not that I am necessarily advocating a “blow it up” approach. It’s just amazing how easily all the horrible QB play from RG3, the disgusted passive-aggressive comments from Gruden, and the losses, upon losses, upon losses can be so easily forgotten.

This is like having one “good hair day” and starting to think: “Man, Brad Pitt ain’t got nothing on me!”

Of course, delusion is it’s own warm blanket. Why should Dan Snyder – or Jay Gruden – leave that blanket until the very moment reality yanks it away from them?

My personal feeling on Griffin, after all of what happened this year, is as follows.

For starters, he’s not as genuine a person as I wanted to believe. He’s more manipulative and self-absorbed than I was willing to see with my own eyes. “Bad guy?” Nah. Not by a longshot. But difficult, yes.

More to the point, I think he’s a flawed pro quarterback. He does not “slide” or “climb” naturally in the pocket, but instead will “crouch and run” at the first sense of pressure. His upper body throwing motion is excellent, but unfortunately betrayed by terrible lower body mechanics. Wrong foot throws. Needless hops and skips. A poor base, and sloppy footwork on what need to be precise 3-5-7 step drops.

His ability to run for positive yardage, has been greatly diminished with injuries, and I feel it will only diminish further with the next significant injury. And that one is coming, almost without question. Griffin absorbs too many needless shots by holding the ball too long, or trying to be a hero while running. He’s also very slight in the lower body, and allows himself to get off-balance while scrambling, leading to awkward hits and landings.

Complicating all of this, is Griffin’s personality. He’s a guy who thinks he knows it all. He knows how to *say* all the right things to sound like a leader, but has no idea how to actually lead. His teammates suffer him, not respect him. Furthermore, he is obsessed with “proving” things all the time. Prove he can come back from an injury. Prove he doesn’t have to be a “running” QB. Prove, prove, prove. The doubters, the haters, the trolls.

This season he might have been humbled to the point where he’s willing to stop doing all of that unhelpful stuff, and change who he is. He might now see clearly what his fundamental flaws are, and will dig in and start changing them.

But I would bet against it. Which is quite different from “rooting against it.” Bet is with the head, root is with the heart.

The personality change would be the easiest to execute. Drop twitter, forgo those annoying #addidas campaigns in the off-season. Hang out with teammates and win them over. That’s all “easy” compared to the stuff on Sundays.

I don’t think he’ll ever completely change the way he plays football. This is because he can’t at this point. Its imprinted on his football DNA. He has been successful playing football doing exactly what now doesn’t work on Sundays. The “crouch and run” then re-load and hit wide open (and now) Sunday afternoon WR studs – Josh Gordon, Terrance Williams, and Kendall Wright – was great in Waco on Saturdays.

It’s not going to work in the pros.

So Griffin will now need to read it, trust it, and throw it in the pros. All game. All the time. The same kind of basic quarterbacking stuff that Gruden dismissively said Griffin was “not even close to being good enough for what we expect from that quarterback position.”

Hanging like a cloud over any further hopes and prayers that Griffin becomes RG Luck with braided hair, is that any miraculous progress could be cut short in a heartbeat by the next knee or ankle injury.

If I were the Redskins, I wouldn’t let this lone win change your mind about whatever conclusions you made about Griffin during training camp and pre-season.

I wouldn’t. But they – meaning Bruce Allen and Dan Snyder – apparently will.