...
In 2012, Robert Griffin III was a big piece of the future of the league, an otherworldly talent who was going to change the nature of the position. He made a run against the Minnesota Vikings that will live in YouTube for eternity. Since then, his career has been a long, slow-motion Zapruder film, complete with conspiracy theories that have reached a crescendo during this year’s training camp. In the 2012 NFC wild-card game, then-coach Mike Shanahan started Griffin, despite a sprained knee, against the Seattle Seahawks and Griffin’s injured knee detonated entirely. Shanahan was roasted for having risked the future of the franchise possibly against medical advice.1 Griffin and his career never were the same. Today it was apparently announced that he had lost his starting job.
...
Needless to say, deliberately contriving a scenario to get an unwanted player off your team in this way would be considerably more detrimental to the integrity of the game than a few underinflated game balls. It would strike at the heart of the NFL’s strategy to obfuscate the unavoidable physical toll of playing professional football. In any case, Gruden spent the week before the Baltimore game spewing clouds of squid ink and succeeding only in making himself look worse. Griffin did not play on Saturday.
It had become clear that Cousins was Gruden’s quarterback of choice and that Griffin’s time in Washington, which had begun so promisingly, was probably at an end. Which is about where Dan Snyder came in to make even more of a hash out of things. According to an ESPN report, people in the Washington front office were trying to unload Griffin. The report also indicated that Snyder was not one of those people — and, being the owner, his opinion carries no little weight. (Also worth noting: If Griffin plays, and if he gets hurt again, Washington could be on the hook for $16 million in guaranteed money next season.) So this is where the Washington Ethnic Slurs begin their year — with the coach at war with one of his quarterbacks, with some personnel honchos at war with that same quarterback, who has nobody in his corner, really, except the owner.
Again, I say, why are Roger Goodell and all his minions wasting so much time trying to hang Tom Brady by his thumbs over something as inconsequential as air? One of his teams is turning into a gang fight, and over the one serious issue that the league has bungled for almost its entire existence. That’s the real dent in The Shield.
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-swamp-the-state-of-the-nfl-in-washington-d-c/
= new reply since forum marked as read
