ROBERT GRIFFIN III IS SENSATIONAL (BUT SO IS KYLE SHANAHAN)
There is no opening day in sports as exciting and meaningful as opening day in the NFL. The uniforms are new, gleaming, and sensational—this year made more sensational by the fact that sports-fashion trendsetter Nike has taken over NFL uniform design under its Pro Combat imprint, and the spandex-inspired fabrics make the athletes look even more encased in their uniforms and impressive than usual.
For RG3, training camp and the preseason were remarkable, setting expectations at a fever pitch for his opener. According to tight end Chris Cooley (who would be released and later re-signed by the club), Griffin’s most impressive preseason work came off the field. Cooley said, “Griffin walked into the Redskins’ locker room and immediately established credibility and leadership. Young players idolize him. Veterans respect him.” The ESPN.com article referred to Griffin as “more mature than his age.”1
“He’s so real,” Cooley told CBS Sports. “This is who he is. I sit next to him in the team meetings, and there isn’t a guy on the team he doesn’t have a relationship with. Not one. He talks to everyone, he shares part of himself with everyone. He sends texts to everyone. Griff is our leader. People wonder if he’s the same guy they see being interviewed or in the commercials. He is. He is the kind of person you want to follow. It’s all real.
“He’s an extremely intelligent person,” Cooley continued. “He graduated high school in three years. He graduated college as an undergrad and had almost completed his master’s. His mind works fast.”2 The veteran tight end would ultimately be a camp casualty—cut before the season began, replaced by younger tight ends including Niles Paul, Logan Paulsen, and emerging star Fred Davis.
Intent on establishing his leadership, Griffin invited teammates to his home in Waco, Texas, before training camp to work on skills and establish relationships. He made believers out of teammates on the field as well. “You hear about his speed, but until you go against it, you don’t actually know what you’re against,” veteran linebacker London Fletcher told CBS. “He has a rocket of an arm. He has the right mentality as far as preparation. . . . When you face him, the speed is what will definitely shock you, and then his talent as well.”3
His preseason debut at Buffalo was pretty quiet, with Griffin muffing a handoff and failing to get a first down on his first series. But his third series revealed 3 straight completions, culminating in a 20-yard scoring strike to Pierre Garçon, who quickly became a favored target in training camp. Griffin’s pass would be the only scoring play of the game for the Redskins, who prevailed by a 7-6 margin.
Preseason also brought a much-anticipated showdown with number one overall pick and Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, who was making believers of his own in Indianapolis. Both quarterbacks acquitted themselves well, with Luck throwing a pretty 61-yard touchdown pass to T. Y. Hilton, and Griffin leading a couple of scoring drives. Both players validated their respective franchises’ excitement in Washington’s 30-17 win.
Robert Griffin III makes his first pro start on the road at New Orleans against a team that has lost its head coach (Sean Payton) to an ugly bounty scandal that dominated NFL headlines for the majority of the offseason. In a nutshell, the Saints were accused of putting bounties on the heads of opposing players—mostly quarterbacks—and rewarding defensive players for injuring their opponents. It’s an uneasy truce that we as fans make with NFL football. We know it’s excessively violent, we even celebrate the violence, but a situation like this creates an awkward tension between the violence that’s there and the image that the league wants to create and promote. Payton, as the on-field leader of the Saints, was offered as a sacrifice, along with the perpetrating coach (defensive coordinator Gregg Williams) and a handful of Saints players, making the hamstrung Saints a tantalizing Week 1 opponent for a rookie QB with talent and some weaponry at his disposal.
On the sidelines for New Orleans is an interim head coach named Aaron Kromer who will be coaching his first game as a head coach at any level. Across the field is Mike Shanahan, who is beginning his third season and has compiled an 11-21 record for an unremarkable .343 winning percentage and to whom the phrase “make or break” could apply. The Redskins will need to see vast improvement, if not a playoff appearance, in order to salvage the Shanahan regime. As always, on the sideline, he looks unhappy and mildly uncomfortable. Joyous exuberance, while demonstrated by some coaches, is not a hallmark of the Shanahan approach. Shanahan has the appearance and demeanor of a professor, and has the genius reputation to accompany it, although the clock is ticking for that genius to reestablish itself.
Warming up across the field is the man charged with keeping the Saints’ ship afloat in the interim, quarterback Drew Brees, whose class and consistency has made him a “face of the franchise” quarterback that all teams crave. Always consistent on the field and never an embarrassment off it, Brees was absolutely sensational a season ago, throwing for 5,476 yards and 46 touchdowns. He also hit a ridiculous 71.2 percent of his passes and is the kind of quarterback who makes stars out of his receivers and tight ends—elevating the numbers of players like Pierre Thomas and making stars out of players like tight end Jimmy Graham, who was better known as a basketball player at the University of Miami.
When Griffin jogs onto the field with the offense, he is the first rookie quarterback to start on opening day for Washington since Norm Snead in 1961, which is remarkable given the parade of first-round draft picks the ’Skins have spent on signal callers (including Heath Shuler, Patrick Ramsey, and Jason Campbell). Joining him in the backfield is fellow rookie Alfred Morris: a sixth-round choice from Florida Atlantic whom Shanahan hopes can master his zone-run schemes and follow in the footsteps of other unheralded 1,000-yard Shanahan backs like Mike Anderson and Olandis Gary.
Griffin’s first pro pass is a short completion to Pierre Garçon, who represented the team’s biggest offseason acquisition and upgraded a woeful receiving corps. Garçon, groomed at tiny Division III powerhouse Mount Union, played in a Super Bowl in Indianapolis and had effectively taken over the “deep threat” mantle from veteran Reggie Wayne. Still, Garçon’s comfort level and rapport with Griffin will determine his worth in Washington, and his acquisition is proof that Shanahan is beginning to overhaul the roster in his own image.
“Pierre is a guy that enjoys blocking as much as receiving, so he’s a very physical wide receiver,” he said in a weekly press conference. “He’s not afraid to hit a safety, hit a corner. Not a lot of wide receivers have that type of mind-set.” He continued, “People talk about wide receivers in general. In Denver, you talk about Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey who took as much pride in the running game as they did in the passing game. Jerry Rice and John Taylor did the same thing. Usually the great ones take the most pride in the things they do.”4
On the same drive, Griffin flashes his running ability on a college-style read-option that goes for 12 yards. The play is both a tantalizing look at his potential, but also an uncomfortable reminder of his fragility. From the waist down, he is built like an Olympic sprinter/defensive end, but his upper body, which of course includes the throwing arm, is slight and will take a pounding if Shanahan continues to deploy him as a runner.
On his third play as a pro, Griffin already shows above-average play-action sleight of hand, freezing the defense on a run fake and hitting Garçon. The play-action ability was something he showed at Baylor and was a major selling point with NFL personnel men. He hits Garçon again for 9, and what develops is an expertly crafted opening drive for a rookie quarterback. Like some teams, the Redskins “script,” or predetermine, the first several offensive play calls of each game. This is done to give players—especially young players—a comfort level with the game plan and a foreknowledge of what’s going to be called when the “bullets are real.” The scripting philosophy began with legendary coach Bill Walsh when he was an assistant with the Cincinnati Bengals. He later perfected the philosophy as a head coach in San Francisco, where he aimed to give young quarterback Joe Montana confidence going into games.
“We have the first 20 plays scripted,” explained Mike Shanahan in a midweek press conference. “Sometimes it’s 15. Sometimes it’s 20. Sometimes it’s a little bit more. The players have a good idea of what’s going to be called in the first quarter, first quarter and a half, so they can go through all of the adjustments that they need to make against different defenses and possible audibles.”5
Each of his scripted throws are short—lots of slants and bubble screens—scripted to build his confidence while not exposing a suspect offensive line with deep drops and long-developing plays. The drive has the added benefit of taking time off the clock and whittling away at Brees’s own opportunities with the football.
When he converts a key third and 5 to slot receiver and return specialist Brandon Banks, Griffin is a perfect 5 for 5, and the drive ends in a field goal by Billy Cundiff.
On his second drive, Griffin settles in for his first play under center, as the entire first drive unfolds from a shotgun, which Griffin used almost exclusively in college. With three receivers lined up in a bunch formation, Griffin drops back, facing a fierce New Orleans pass rush in his face. He sets his feet and throws a laser over the middle to Garçon, who dashes untouched into the end zone as Griffin pulls himself off the turf and runs downfield for a chest-bump with his new receiver. The pass serves notice that Griffin is more than a runner, and that he can see opportunities downfield and deliver an accurate football.
“I know how pumped I was and how pumped our team was,” said Kyle Shanahan of the scoring play. “It took us until Week 16 to run a touchdown in last year on a reception and it happened in the first quarter of this game. It wasn’t a small one, it was a big one. When you get plays like that, I think it changes the whole aspect of the game—coverages get softer, people get more scared, people get confident. It makes it a lot easier on everybody.”6
Griffin ends the quarter a perfect 7 for 7 with 123 yards and a touchdown. The game plan appears balanced, with 7 runs and 7 passes thus far with the quarterback showing preternatural poise on the road in a loud, hostile environment.
A second-quarter play-action rollout shows still more evidence of Griffin’s unique skill set. He extends the play with his feet, eluding defenders and throwing a 26-yard strike across his body and across the field with accuracy. His first incompletion doesn’t occur until 12:24 of the second quarter.
On a third and goal from the 5-yard line, in a shotgun with three receivers to the right of the formation, Griffin coolly hits Aldrick Robinson on a slant for the score. He slow-points to the sky. It seems rehearsed in the mode of Cam Newton’s “Superman” or Tim Tebow’s “Tebowing.”
With a 20-14 lead to open the third quarter, Griffin hits veteran wideout Santana Moss for 14 yards. He then accurately connects with Josh Morgan for 21 (again off play-action), then mixes in a zone run to Morris, who always seems to fall forward and already has the look of a Shanahan back. On a courageous call on fourth down and inches, Griffin throws deep and draws a pass-interference call to extend the drive. They score a play later on a Morris plunge from a yard out, and the extra point makes the score 27-14. For the first time there is the reality that a rookie quarterback could light up Drew Brees and the Saints in their own house.
Griffin, who by the end of the third quarter has amassed 258 passing yards and 2 touchdowns, stands in stark statistical contrast to his rookie counterparts, all of whom are struggling in their openers. Luck has gone 14-34 with 2 picks; Dolphins rookie Ryan Tannehill has thrown 3 interceptions; and Browns first-rounder Brandon Weeden has 3 picks to go with only 93 passing yards.
Meanwhile, Brees is doing what Brees does, which is passing the football and keeping New Orleans competitive in the fourth quarter. He hits receiver Lance Moore deep on a fourth-down play, and a Darren Sproles 2-point conversion shrinks the gap to 33-25 Redskins with 6:19 to go. The next time Brees has the football, he’s picked by Redskins safety DeJon Gomes, who returns the ball 49 yards to the Saints 3 on a high, ill-advised pass. Alfred Morris runs off left tackle for the score—bulling his way in and freight-training David Hawthorne in the process, making the score 40-25 with the extra point. For the sake of perspective, it is the first time since 2005 the Redskins have scored 40 points in a game.
The final score is 40-32, and the final numbers tell the story of a brilliantly conceived game plan by offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. The time-of-possession battle was ruled by Washington (39:10 to 20:50), and Morris contributed 96 yards and 2 TDs on the ground. Mike Shanahan would say the following week, “He is a young back with a lot of ability. He can hit the hole extremely hard and has the lateral quickness to make you miss, but he’s got the power to run over people. That’s a pretty good combination. He’s got a good feel for the game. I don’t think blocking is too big for him either. It seems like he enjoys blocking, as well as running the football. After the game you can tell that it was just a game. A lot of guys get intimidated in their first football game in the National Football League, especially on the road in that environment. You could see that it wasn’t too big for him.”7
Griffin’s debut, meanwhile, was nearly historic, as only Cam Newton passed for more yardage (422) in a rookie debut. Griffin finished with 320 yards passing, another 42 on the ground, and 2 touchdowns. The play calling was equal parts protective of Griffin and ultra-aggressive and confident when it needed to be.
“I was real pleased with how he played the whole game,” said Kyle Shanahan afterward. “You guys know the big passes he made—the big one to [wide receiver] Pierre [Garçon] just hanging in there when they were bringing in one more than we could pick up. He hung in there, took the hit, got it off, and there was a 90-yard touchdown because of it. There are also a few times in the game where he called some shot plays that weren’t there and it was nice for him not to just throw it just because we called it. He was able to go to the next guy and be smart with the ball—not always just taking the big play, just let the game come to him.”8
“Letting the game come to him” is one of the most oft-used press-conference clichés in sports. In reality, Griffin did anything but. He seized his starting opportunity as definitively as Newton did the year before, and as definitively as any other rookie quarterback in history. A message had been sent. The Redskins had their quarterback, and they knew how to use him.