Fallout From Griffin's Injury

I've had some time to think about this, and I'm definitely leaning more towards Goaldie & Dreamingwolf.

Listen - all of you clamoring about how "Griffin didn't look right" need to be honest with yourselves - Griffin did not look right at all since after the initial injury he sustained against the Ravens. His passing accuracy outside of a couple throws against the Eagles has been very suspect, especially against Dallas. I didn't hear anyone talking about how Cousins should have started the final games after Cleveland! And its simply because we were winning. Because as Boone (or Henry) pointed out, because the Cowboys were too stupid to realize that Griffin was a shell of his former self, so they respected his passing ability, despite all the worm-burners.

There are a lot of people who are really mad right now, because we lost arguably the best rookie this franchise has ever seen to a potentially disastrous injury in his last game of the season. Yes, it sucks. Yes, I'm furious right now too. But we all knew the risks going in with this kid - slight build, 6'1, ACL injury history - let's not pretend like this is a total blind side or anything.

But to call for Shanahan to be fired? Are you kidding? We just won the division for the first time since 1999. THIRTEEN YEARS. We've gotten rid of 99% of the "problem players" from the Vinny regime. D. Hall & his ****ty contract are all that is left. This franchise has turned around, and is headed in the right direction. We have rookie OLineman that step in for injured starters and play WELL. We have a WR who if he had not hurt his foot in week one, I am confident would have shattered our team receiving records. Yes, a lot of this is due to Griffin, but a lot of it is due to the overall character of the team, and the players that this staff has assembled.

And don't forget, its only due to Mike Shanahan that we even have a viable "option B" in the first place. How many other coaches would have taken Kirk Cousins in the fourth round after trading the farm for Griffin? Not many, I'm betting. A lot of fans were outraged by that pick (myself included), but how genius does it look now?

As far as "he should have pulled him" or he "should have let him play," I will let that decision go into history as a questionmark. I am not going to begin to know that I would have made the right decision. How many of you would have left Terrell Davis in the superbowl with a migraine so bad he couldn't even see? How many other examples has there been even this year? I'm sure Fletcher probably could have benefitted from a few games off after his injury, but the coaches left it up to him to play, and he did. He only won defensive player of the month due to his efforts. Decisions like this are made all the time; they are scrutinized when they don't work, and celebrated when they do. What happens if Fletcher takes a week off and we lose due to poor defensive breakdowns? We get infuriated that the coaching staff shut down our best defensive player.

Anyway, I'm representing my Skins today, and that includes Mike Shanahan. I'm excited to see what this offseason holds, and who we take in the draft to continue the amazing direction this franchise is headed. I'm excited to see Carriker and Orakpo back in uniform, and how that revitalizes our defense. I'm excited to see if Chase Minnifield is recovered from his knee injury, and if he can really play CB. Yes, its a downer to know that Griffin is probably out for a long time, but I have waited 20 years, I can wait one more.

Sorry to anyone I have offended with this post, I <3 you all.

Lanky Livingston said:

As far as "he should have pulled him" or he "should have let him play," I will let that decision go into history as a questionmark. I am not going to begin to know that I would have made the right decision. How many of you would have left Terrell Davis in the superbowl with a migraine so bad he couldn't even see? How many other examples has there been even this year? I'm sure Fletcher probably could have benefitted from a few games off after his injury, but the coaches left it up to him to play, and he did. He only won defensive player of the month due to his efforts. Decisions like this are made all the time; they are scrutinized when they don't work, and celebrated when they do. What happens if Fletcher takes a week off and we lose due to poor defensive breakdowns? We get infuriated that the coaching staff shut down our best defensive player.

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I'm not calling for him to be fired. Not until I've had a few more drinks anyway.

But I will address this. Griffin's injury was a KNEE injury. I said it when it happened: You don't **** with knee injuries. Plenty of players go into games with something. Hell, half a team's roster is nicked up by the end of any given season. Playing with a sprained ankle or a bum shoulder or whatever ... that's fine. But a knee? You just can't mess with it. Especially for a guy who needs it to run and throw.

I had no problem with Griffin playing in the Philly or Dallas game because we were winning without stressing that knee. If he had started looking noticeably worse as the game went on, however, you're damn right I'd have been calling for him to sit. It's a knee. Just like with noggins, you don't mess with knees.

And this is why.

Henry said:

I'm not calling for him to be fired. Not until I've had a few more drinks anyway.

But I will address this. Griffin's injury was a KNEE injury. I said it when it happened: You don't **** with knee injuries. Plenty of players go into games with something. Hell, half a team's roster is nicked up by the end of any given season. Playing with a sprained ankle or a bum shoulder or whatever ... that's fine. But a knee? You just can't mess with it. Especially for a guy who needs it to run and throw.

I had no problem with Griffin playing in the Philly or Dallas game because we were winning without stressing that knee. If he had started looking noticeably worse as the game went on, however, you're damn right I'd have been calling for him to sit. It's a knee. Just like with noggins, you don't mess with knees.

And this is why.

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We still don't know if the second injury is related to the first "tweak." And I'm not sure what Dallas game you were watching, but Griffin's passing looked awful. I'm pretty sure it was his worst day accuracy-wise all season (by a LOT), but it didn't matter because The Butler was serving.

Lanky Livingston said:

We still don't know if the second injury is related to the first "tweak."

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And with this staff we'll never know. But it was. I'm sorry, anyone who thinks these injuries are totally independent of each other is fooling himself.

And I'm not sure what Dallas game you were watching, but Griffin's passing looked awful. I'm pretty sure it was his worst day accuracy-wise all season (by a LOT), but it didn't matter because The Butler was serving.

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He looked like he was at 80%, like he did against Philly and against Seattle in the first quarter. After he obviously hurt himself again against Seattle, he looked noticeably worse.

Henry said:

And with this staff we'll never know. But it was. I'm sorry, anyone who thinks these injuries are totally independent of each other is fooling himself.

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Just goes back to my original point about him not playing at all after the Baltimore injury. All the Seattle injuries were related to that one, after all. You can't have it both ways IMO; you either sit him immediately, or you deal with the consequences.

He looked like he was at 80%, like he did against Philly and against Seattle in the first quarter. After he obviously hurt himself again against Seattle, he looked noticeably worse.

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80% is being generous - most of his runs against Dallas looked like they were on one leg. Compared to what he was doing say against the Vikings, I'd say he was more like 60-65%. After the first Seattle injury, that probably dropped to 50%, yes.

The team hired Mike Shanahan to exercise judgment. That includes not putting his key players in position to perhaps compromise their futures for a questionable short term gain. I think it was clear to most that in the third and fourth quarters that Griffin was not effective either on the ground or via the pass and was a sitting duck for a nasty shot from the Seattle defense that would put him out.

Bulldog's Twin said:

The team hired Mike Shanahan to exercise judgment. That includes not putting his key players in position to perhaps compromise their futures for a questionable short term gain. I think it was clear to most that in the third and fourth quarters that Griffin was not effective either on the ground or via the pass and was a sitting duck for a nasty shot from the Seattle defense that would put him out.

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Griffin's two runs, as gimpy as they were, opened up running lanes for Morris after he made them. Check out @UKRedskin1 on twitter, he has an excellent breakdown of what was going on.

Here, I'll just post it:

UKRedskin1 said:

My view on the whole benching RGIII thing yesterday. After RGIII re-aggravated his knee in late 1st Q, Seattle stopped accounting for him.

Seattle cheated on the run, bringing down a safety and crashing on option looks knowing RGIII wouldn't run himself.

By keeping RGIII in the game, he managed to take a couple of option runs for solid gains, forcing the D to account for him again.

However, they still played only 1 deep safety because RGIII was struggling to throw. That meant they still had 1 extra tackler in run game.

Kyle Shanahan was backing RGIII to be able to hit the deep shot just once to force Seattle to drop deeper and open running lanes.

Obviously, RGIII couldn't hit that deep ball. But if he had hit Garcon instead of that INT, running lanes opened, completely different game.

Now, you put Cousins in the game after the 1st Q, Seattle defense is playing 11 v 10 in run game again.

Seattle doesn't have to account for Cousins in run game, meaning extra tackler. So they could still drop the safety for extra coverage.

Only man beating coverage on any sort of consistent basis was Garcon. Cousins comes in, they could easily double him.

So yes, I think RGIII on one leg was still the best option for the Redskins. And I say that as a big fan of Cousins.

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Very interesting to me that the entire game plan seemingly hinged on that deep ball to Garçon.

https://twitter.com/UkRedskin1

The Redskins had 100 yards of offense after the first quarter. Hard to believe that a healthy Cousins working with Morris would not have achieved more than that.

Bulldog's Twin said:

The Redskins had 100 yards of offense after the first quarter. Hard to believe that a healthy Cousins working with Morris would not have achieved more than that.

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Of course he would have.

Rex Grossman could out run Griffin after he injured himself in the 1st quarter.

Cousins could have run the option and produced more yards than Griffin.

And, not being down 10 with 3 minutes to go would have been a lot easier for Cousins to work.

Epic fail of head coaching, with a case of ego driven bad judgement by Robert.

Again, I don't think a Super Bowl coach at 60 just listens to a 22 year old telling him he is OK when the coaches eyes and the stat sheet are telling him a different story.

This is similar to what happened with Boudreau and Oveckin for 3 plus years. Boudreau listened to Ovechkin and allowed him to play his game and then when he finally tried to pull the reins in the player, by then feeling entitled, rebelled.

Shanahan is teaching the wrong lesson here to Griffin and the team.

No one is bigger than the team. When a guy can't compete, he needs to sit.

That's a nice twitter post, but the simple fact is the offense completely shut down once Griffin further injured his knee. It should have been very very obvious once Griffin threw that pick. Coaching staff needed to throw that plan out the window and figure something else out. Not wait until our QB completely blows out what's left of his knee.

This franshice has let us down time and again. I don't understand the need to justify their actions. There's no excusing this situation. There is no silver lining. There is no acceptable excuse. Shanhan has too much experience to pass this off as any thing other than a collosal screw up.

Henry said:

That's a nice twitter post, but the simple fact is the offense completely shut down once Griffin further injured his knee. It should have been very very obvious once Griffin threw that pick. Coaching staff needed to throw that plan out the window and figure something else out. Not wait until our QB completely blows out what's left of his knee.

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Belittle it all you want, but if the doctor is telling the Shanahan's that Griffin can play, and they're seeing the same thing, then they keep him in. The object is to win that playoff game, not look 15 years down the road at what might happen. Griffin could have blown out his knee in minicamp next season, we've seen that before.

A lot of people were arguing for this very situation the first time he hurt his knee. Don't start him for the rest of the season, think of the future, etc. This is the NFL, its a win-now league. There is no future. You do what you think is best to win this game, this week, and worry about next week when it comes, IF it comes.

Lanky, there was a glaringly obvious difference in Robert's ability to get out of his own way, much less plant the leg to throw off of, after the ill advised sideline throw when he immediately took his helmet off, in pain.

Giving him until halftime to prove he could get the job done was more than enough. He was worse than Rex Grossman and Mark Brunell, on their worse days, combined.

As I've said, Stevie ****ing Wonder could see it. I'm amazed that anybody, could not.

The most tragic thing about this, is Shanny should have learned his lesson from the first injury in the Raven game, when Griffin insisted on going back in to attempt to direct that drive on one leg.

Lanky Livingston said:

Belittle it all you want, but if the doctor is telling the Shanahan's that Griffin can play, and they're seeing the same thing, then they keep him in. The object is to win that playoff game, not look 15 years down the road at what might happen. Griffin could have blown out his knee in minicamp next season, we've seen that before.

A lot of people were arguing for this very situation the first time he hurt his knee. Don't start him for the rest of the season, think of the future, etc. This is the NFL, its a win-now league. There is no future. You do what you think is best to win this game, this week, and worry about next week when it comes, IF it comes.

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Again Lanky, I understand weighing a player's injury against the chances of winning the game. But I think it was painfully obvious to most of us that by the second half we were playing an injured player AND getting nothing out of it. Him getting hurt was just a big fat exclamation point.

Had we won this game you might have a point. Had Griffin hit that long bomb to Garcon instead of under throwing into double coverage because he couldn't plant his foot, you might have something. But we could all see the guy was hurting so bad he couldn't play, and they left him in anyway. That our coach couldn't see this is very troubling. That it's going to potentially cost us our best player for a few months, a year, his entire career ...

That's more than troubling.

Henry said:

Had Griffin hit that long bomb to Garcon instead of under throwing into double coverage because he couldn't plant his foot, you might have something.

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Just as an aside, that was a poor decision. Morgan was open in the middle of the field on an intermediate route on that play. I don't know if it showed on TV, but he was. I grant that he couldn't plant, but that was a rare "rookie decision" by the QB.

I could not, however, see how bad he was hurting until I got home and saw some replays. After seeing that, I agree with the (mostly) consensus that he should have been pulled after the first quarter; despite how good the offense had looked.

Ultimately, IMO, it does nothing productive to play the blame game. The decision was made to keep him in. It can't be changed. And trying to run Shanahan out of town is certainly COUNTER-productive. We'll just have to wait and see the hand we're dealt, and play it.

HAIL.

I'm not trying to run anyone out of town.

However, we shouldn't pretend that Shanahan didn't make a huge mistake with his QB. And it should be noted that he's made quite a few huge mistakes regarding his QBs since he's been here. It bears watching. He seems to fixate on certain QBs and seems incapable of seeing clearly obvious flaws in their game until it's too late. It's happened with pretty much every single QB he's started for this team, except Cousins.

We'll probably get a chance to see how Shanahan handles him next year.