Adam Schefter ESPN.com : Redskins to start McCoy over RG III

Andy Dalton Om. Andy effin' Dalton. If Gruden can't make it work with Griffin after making Andy effin' Dalton look like an All-Pro, then Gruden ain't the QB Guru he was sold to us as.

Yes, Griffin bears a lot of responsibility for his play, no doubt. And it wouldn't shock me if he DIDN'T study as hard as "should" have. But the responsibility ultimately lies with the coach. He is the leader of the team, and as such it is his job to make it work with each and every player. Not try his best to make it work, but actually make it work. I feel fairly certain that Dan and Bruce didn't hire Gruden to give his best effort in reaching Robert. I'm pretty sure they hired him to REACH Robert and make him better. Ergo, he failed. There is no other interpretation in my opinion.

Henry said:

Honestly, I don't care. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. We don't know. None of us do.

All we know is that it's never the team. It's Laveranous Coles' fault, or Lavar's fault, or Brandon Lloyd's fault, or McNabb's fault, or Griffin's fault. Those jerks. They never work with the team. They never listen to coaches. They may produce for other guys or other teams but here they are just a bunch of losers.

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Laveranues Coles left Washington because he wasn't happy with Joe Gibbs' offense.

And who could blame him? Joe Gibbs was such a jerk that not even Lavar Arrington and Brandon Lloyd could escape his doghouse.

McNabb, on the other hand? Not even going to try to defend the graceless way he was treated by Shanahan. Shanny was, admittedly, another in a list of examples of how Snyder has been willing to deal with the devil.


But if you look around the league, you'll see that the Redskins aren't the only team that sometimes signs guys who display more athletic ability than intelligence or character ( and you'll notice a number of guys who make our worst signings look like angels. Heck, even Albert Haynesworth has so far avoided prison ).

It just seems like it.

Goaldeje said:

I am growing to hate football this year. This season is just... the worst. Just the worse.

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Yeah, I've become very disillusioned with the NFL in general this year. The level of dysfunction in this entire organization doesn't help anything at all. The rest of this season and future seasons I may just end up taking the route of my grandpa and brother and stop watching games in general and instead go fishing.

Om said:

Yes, Jay has a lot to learn about handling the managerial and public aspects of the job, but I have never felt or had reason to believe he didn't give the tutelage of RG3 a genuine effort.

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I can't disagree with you here. I don't think all blame should go on the coach in this case; as much as it pains me to say, RG3 has looked lost and just...not good.

Goal...I don't think he's benching Griffin because he's raw or playing bad. His footwork is awful and as a result the entire offense is out of rhythm. Instead of being planted and ready to throw he's shuffling his feet and he's late in his reads. He's making the kind of fundamental mistakes you shouldn't be making in your 3rd year as a pro and he's only getting worse. If he was just missing throws or throwing interceptions I doubt if he gets benched.

OK. Was his footwork that bad last year? I am asking honestly because I can't remember. Seems to me he has looked WORSE this year than any other.

Gruden is the change, he deserves a lot of the blame, imo. This move strikes me as an ass-covering move by Jay.

Goaldeje said:

OK. Was his footwork that bad last year? I am asking honestly because I can't remember. Seems to me he has looked WORSE this year than any other.

Gruden is the change, he deserves a lot of the blame, imo. This move strikes me as an ass-covering move by Jay.

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Yes it was brought up but Kyle got accused of being too much of a stickler.

Goaldeje said:

OK. Was his footwork that bad last year? I am asking honestly because I can't remember. Seems to me he has looked WORSE this year than any other.

Gruden is the change, he deserves a lot of the blame, imo. This move strikes me as an ass-covering move by Jay.

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His footwork was bad last year, but most people attributed it to not being fully healthy. This year, his footwork is worse. For whatever reason, under Gruden, he has become a worse QB.

Footwork, timing, vision....it's all lacking this season. Lots of possible explanations for everything and I can't point to any one thing. Offensive line issues, new scheme, terminology, injuries.....all of em. Robert to me has simply lost his swagger and confidence. He's a competitor, but he's too hesitant and questioning. This impacts his fundamentals...he won't throw thru a ball....he hesitates and doesn't just fire into a small space....he goes to a third progression when he could have made the first successful. The man is just lost out there right now and as much as I hate to say it, for fear of him getting injured or piling on and breaking down his psyche even further as the season progressed, this was probably the correct thing to do. Though, I'm really not sure if it is.

I guess we'll see.

I was just remembering his year in 2012...especially the Thanksgiving game. The guy could flat out play football. Scheme be damned, it really didn't matter what scheme it was, Robert could simply play.

I hope he can find his mojo again. Preferably as a Redskin.

It'll be interesting to see how the team plays against the Colts behind McCoy. Regardless of whether they win or lose, if they look energized and enthusiastic, that a strong indicator that they approve of this QB change. On the other hand, if they look listless and uninterested, you can probably take that as an indictment of the coach.

And, for all the noise we're capable of making on the internet, in the end it's the players who Gruden really needs to impress.

^^^Yea, things have definitely gotten into his head. I'm not saying Griffin sucks. I still think with a good O line he's an average or better QB, but he's still got a long way to go. He's not a west coast Qb right now, that might take years, and it doesn't help that we're trying to pound a square peg into a circle hole, but they've tried everything you can do with him. At this point he's only capable of handing the ball off and running play action off that. Both Kyle and Jay have tried that and our O line and D isn't dominant enough to win that way right now.

I'm glad he doesn't have to impress the fans, because you could add that to the list of things Gruden has failed at. Utterly.

From the outside looking in, he is allowing the inmates who are unhappy about the lack of balls getting thrown to them to run the asylum. Instead of carefully examining the root of the problem, Gruden has gone for the simple, easy fix. The problem, as Go Deep said, is that Griffin is a square peg, and Gruden's offense is a round hole. Instead of adapting the system, or coaching up Robert to improve, Gruden simply replaces him with an average NFL QB. Griffin has regressed under Gruden; last year, Griffin looked like an average NFL QB, this year he looks like a disaster. That, after being told all Summer that Gruden is an offensive guru/genius who would improve Griffin and make him the QB we all thought he could be.

But instead, RGIII has regressed. Dramatically.

Combining that fact with the cluster**** that was how Gruden handled everything publically leaves me exceptionally unimpressed with Gruden as a coach.

Sam Hill said:

Laveranues Coles left Washington because he wasn't happy with Joe Gibbs' offense.

And who could blame him? Joe Gibbs was such a jerk that not even Lavar Arrington and Brandon Lloyd could escape his doghouse.

McNabb, on the other hand? Not even going to try to defend the graceless way he was treated by Shanahan. Shanny was, admittedly, another in a list of examples of how Snyder has been willing to deal with the devil.

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Different coaches. Different front office structures. Different players.

Same results.

Same.

Results.

But if you look around the league, you'll see that the Redskins aren't the only team that sometimes signs guys who display more athletic ability than intelligence or character ( and you'll notice a number of guys who make our worst signings look like angels. Heck, even Albert Haynesworth has so far avoided prison ).

It just seems like it.

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The Redskins have made blaming everyone else a freakin' art form. I don't know how other teams handle it when they screw up for the fifteenth time. I don't follow them.

Either.

Sam Hill said:

And, for all the noise we're capable of making on the internet, in the end it's the players who Gruden really needs to impress.

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Actually, it's the fans the team needs to impress.

It's the fans the league needs to impress.

And I am not impressed.

I heard several blame the OL for part of Griffin's problems. We definitely have a poor OL. Thing is it is basically same OL we had in 2012. Difference is in 2012 Griffin was a threat with read options or to run. Defenses had to account for this and gave him more time, which made OL look better than it was.

Now defenses aren't afraid of Griffin running. They know he isn't the same guy. Defenses have caught up to read option which took a large part of his game away.

I think Griffin is a very good person. He just couldn't stay healthy enough to be a good NFL QB. I wish he had been more successful. He seemed more interested in marketing himself than perfecting his craft.

I didn't know we ran any read options with him this year. Matter of fact he's been under center and not in the shotgun most of the time.

And we're judging his performance after facing a stellar DL with a rookie blocking aldon smith. Yeah..that's fair

I don't think it's a move that was designed to ween us off of Griffin and ship him out of town. He has a year left on his contract, and he will be here next year, I'm certain of it.

This is nothing more than a motivational tool. We have all heard what a great QB coach Gruden is. He's had a long reputation for greatly improving a QB, and he has a great reputation as a motivator from what's been said about him. What he's doing right now, is resetting Griffin's line of thinking by giving him a nice, long and thorough mind ****. Unless Griffin is a complete dumbass, or total self-worshiping jackhole, it should work beautifully.

I would be willing to bet that behind the scenes, things went a lot differently than a lot of people are assuming. He probably told Griffin he isn't the starter anymore, and if he ever wants to be the starter again he has to prove it. He likely also told him the job would be an open competition next season, and he needs to figure out whether he wants to be a celebrity spokesman or an NFL quarterback.

Griffin's problem is, he loves the limelight way too much. He's worse than Brian Bosworth about it, and you see where that went. He also cares too much about whether people like him or not, and he worries too much about losing his job. Well, now he's lost his job, he will undoubtedly not get any new endorsement deals, and will probably not get an extension on his current ones. As far as his celebrity status goes, Gruden has pulled the rug out from under him and started waving the smelling salts under his nose.

Griffin needs to take this opportunity to work harder than he's ever worked to improve, and prove that being a QB in the NFL is what he wants, and he needs to steer away from being the center of attention instead of demanding the spotlight. If he doesn't improve with all the time and motivation he has been given to do so, he doesn't deserve to be anything more than a backup for anybody.

Right now, he sucks as an NFL QB, that's just a cold hard fact. People defend him and blame injuries, but many players have come back from very bad injuries and/or a lot of missed time (Manning, Brees, Romo, Brady) and excelled. People also like to blame the offensive line, but Griffin's play right now wouldn't be good for anything behind the best line in the league. Our line is bad, but it's absolutely not the reason he has played like shit for 2 years. Good QBs don't let a setback derail their career like Griffin seems to be doing.

He was the anointed one, and thought he had the starting job in the bag because we sold the farm to get him. That made him complacent, and his drive to be the leader wasn't as strong, because he never thought he'd have to fight for the job. If this doesn't light a fire under this kid's ass, nothing will, and he will never be a successful NFL QB.

Goaldeje-

Carry on, my man.

Carry on.

I find it such a refreshing change to have a coach who holds every player equally accountable, doesn't play favorites, coddle players, hold bias, or hold up any blinders on his eyes at all, but rather sees the whole picture, and does so fully objectively, and doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to doing exactly what it takes to win football games, no matter how unpopular,

So how are we going to play without an offensive line, a D-Coordinator, Safeties or pass rush? Surely Gruden will bench them for performance issues too?

Fear The Spear said:

I find it such a refreshing change to have a coach who holds every player equally accountable, doesn't play favorites, coddle players, hold bias, or hold up any blinders on his eyes at all, but rather sees the whole picture, and does so fully objectively, and doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to doing exactly what it takes to win football games, no matter how unpopular,

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I don't totally agree. I understand why you would say that, except that all those that haven't been performing prior to his benching Robert are still on the field, so...