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Steve Young: Coaches have told me RG3 doesn’t put in the time

Posted by Michael David Smith on November 18, 2014, 12:50 PM EDT
coaching14s-1-web
AP
Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young says he knows the problem with Robert Griffin III: He doesn’t work hard enough.

Young said on the Michael Kay Show that he has spoken with coaches who have worked with Griffin, and those coaches told him that Griffin simply doesn’t spend the long hours studying film that an NFL quarterback needs.

“I’ve talked to his previous coaches, people I really trust and admire, that know quarterbacks. He doesn’t put the time in,” Young said.

Young didn’t mention any of those “previous coaches” by name, but it’s not a leap to infer that he’s referring to Mike Shanahan, who was Washington’s head coach for Griffin’s first two seasons. Shanahan was the 49ers’ offensive coordinator from 1992 to 1994, when Young was having his three best seasons as the 49ers’ starting quarterback. Shanahan and Young have been close for years.

According to Young, it’s the mental side of the game that makes a good quarterback in the NFL, and Young believes that Griffin needs to spend more time developing the mental side of the game during the offseason.

“Success is really about expertise,” Young said. “May, June, July work, and going to school.”

Much like Griffin, Young was once an athletic quarterback who needed time to learn how to be a pocket passer. Young thinks it’s harder for great runners like Griffin to develop as passers because they always assume they can fall back on running if they need to.

“Guys that can use their legs, it’s like they’re not desperate. Guys who can’t use their legs are more desperate so they’ll put more time in,” Young said.

And according to Young, Griffin isn’t putting the time in. That’s what’s holding him back.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/201...ut-in-the-time/

Jay Gruden says Browns might be good fit for Robert Griffin III
Mar 23, 2016
John Keim
ESPN Staff Writer
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Washington Redskins coach Jay Gruden said if Robert Griffin III ends up signing with Cleveland, it could be a good fit for the quarterback.

Griffin visited with Cleveland last weekend and the Browns remain interested in signing him, per head coach Hue Jackson. Griffin has visited with the New York Jets, but that has been it since he was released by the Redskins earlier this month. Jackson ran similar concepts to Gruden, whom he followed as offensive coordinator in Cincinnati.

“He has a little bit of a grasp on what Hue does. I think there will be a little bit of a change. I think it’ll be a good fit for him,” Gruden said at the owners meetings via ESPN reporter Eric Williams. “I haven’t talked to Hue at all about Robert, but I think a change of scenery could be good for Robert. Like anybody, sometimes you just want to get out of a situation and start new and fresh. Learn something new, I think it’s a good fit because a lot of things Hue does I believe are similar. I think Robert can play in this league for sure, just needs another opportunity.”


Jay Gruden says Robert Griffin III can succeed in Cleveland if he learns the system and sharpens his dropback passing. AP Photo/Michael Ainsworth
While some in the NFL say it’s unusual that Jackson wouldn’t have talked to Gruden or other coaches in the organization, it’s also a case of Jackson perhaps wanting to enter into a possible relationship with untainted thoughts. Besides, Griffin’s ups and downs have been well documented.

Gruden benched Griffin in August and inserted Kirk Cousins as the starter. Griffin was active for only one game this past season. But Gruden said he still thinks he can succeed in the NFL.

"Yeah, of course, yes,” Gruden said. “He’s very talented. We all know that. We all saw what he did as a rookie. Now just continue to gain knowledge of the systems and keep him healthy and on the field. I think he has a chance.”

The Redskins moved on from Griffin because they would have had to pay him $16.155 million this season otherwise. Their commitment remains firm to Cousins. But Gruden has said more than a few times the move to Cousins was more about him than Griffin.

“No question it was never about Robert it was more about Kirk's emergence really is what happened. It wasn't that Robert tanked it and we just wanted to make a change,” Gruden said. “We felt that Kirk had such good OTAs in training camp we just felt that he was progressing at a faster rate is why we made the change. So, I think that Robert can play in this league for sure, just needs another opportunity.”

If nothing else, Griffin will enter camp as healthy as he probably has been in the NFL. His lone issue occurred this past summer when he suffered what they thought might be a concussion (but was never officially diagnosed as such).

Gruden also said he thought Griffin would be a good teammate wherever he lands. Griffin earned praise, publicly and privately, from numerous people in the organization for how he handled this past season.

Not playing for a year will have some impact on Griffin, too, from a mental standpoint in terms of hunger to develop. How it plays out remains to be seen. But Gruden also intimated that it’s not as simple as returning to what Griffin ran his rookie year.

“Well, I kept a lot of my offensive staff from the years with Coach [Mike] Shanahan so we could implement some of that stuff,” Gruden said. “We ran the zone read, we ran a lot of the bootlegs. I just think he had a couple injuries which hampered his ability to perform at the high level that he was his rookie year.

“He’s fully healthy now and he’s ready to compete and he can do the zone read, he can run the bootlegs and all that stuff that make him effective outside the pocket. Eventually he’s going to have to continue to master the dropback passing game in the NFL, which he’s continuing to do and he will do.”

But Gruden said he thinks Griffin remains a “very confident guy.” Playing quarterback in the NFL demands a quarterback stay confident, Gruden said.

“You have to be mentally tough and confident and handle adversity and Robert has gone through some now,” Gruden said. “I think he’s going to come out of it on the good end.”

http://espn.go.com/blog/washington-redsk...-fit-for-rg-iii

Are you calling him a liar, too?

WED NOV. 6, 2013
The Trouble with RG3

Halfway through his second season, it’s impossible to call Robert Griffin III anything but an unrefined quarterback. Slowed by his surgically repaired right knee and often playing from behind, he’s learning how to be a drop-back passer the hard way


Robert Griffin III was the NFL’s most talked about player entering the season, and the conversation surrounding him hasn’t waned over the first nine weeks. Much of it has been conjecture and pontification, which is the nature of football’s media coverage. As a result, some important points have been lost along the way.

There’s no question that RG3’s surgically repaired right knee has significantly impacted his game. His trust in the knee seems to fluctuate, and it's no surprise that his running prowess has declined. Through the first half of the 2012 season, he had 24 scrambles for an average gain of 12.0 yards. According to Football Outsiders, he also averaged 4.8 yards on 40 “other runs” such as read-options, draws and bootlegs. So far this season, Griffin has scrambled 18 times for an average of 5.7 yards. He’s averaging 5.9 yards on “other” runs, but those attempts are down 30%. It’s clear that he lacks the same burst and change-of-direction quickness that defined his rookie season.

Griffin has also been cautious with his knee when dropping back to pass. Though he is stepping into his throws with more conviction than he did back in September, his footwork remains inconsistent and has led to accuracy glitches, with too many of his balls sailing high.


Less noticed, but more important, is his failure to grasp the cerebral elements of his position. Because his otherworldly athleticism has diminished, Griffin is now operating from the pocket more often. Every great NFL quarterback (with the possible exception of Ben Roethlisberger) has a refined pocket presence. Griffin, at this point, does not.

This should be alarming to Washington, because it factors into the amount (and severity) of hits RG3 takes. Last season Griffin absorbed many big hits at the end of scrambles. He scrambled because he was a one-read quarterback, meaning he tucked the ball and ran if his initial receiver wasn’t open. Though he remains mostly a one-read QB in Washington’s run-based system, Griffin has been given more multi-progression play designs by head coach Mike Shanahan and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. (It’s been a must because Washington has played from behind more than any team except for Jacksonville.)

Griffin’s growth has been sluggish here. To be fair, he’s only 23 and he spent the entire offseason rehabbing his knee. And the process isn’t as simple as the Shanahans saying, “On these next few plays, if Option A is covered, we want you to stay in the pocket and look for Option B instead of scrambling, and if he’s covered, go to Option C.” Staying in the pocket requires fine-tuned mechanics. It also requires the quarterback to actually understand what he’s looking at.

Inexperienced quarterbacks often think that reading the field means recognizing when a guy gets open. Great QBs know that reading the field is more about recognizing when a guy is not open. Quickness is the key to good recognition. Great quarterbacks have a scientific understanding of how each route works in relation to the others, and how they’re all designed to leverage different defensive looks and find holes in the coverage.

After diagnosing the defensive scheme, a great quarterback knows almost immediately what his best options are. Instead of waiting to see if Option A, B or C eventually gets open, he treats those reads as quick confirmations (maybe a defender has slipped?) before targeting Options D and E. This is how QBs like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees are able to work deep into their progressions, and why they’re so tough to stop.
An unrefined quarterback sits in the pocket and waits ... and waits ... and waits ... for Option A to get open. Or, when he finally moves on to Option B, he starts the mental process all over again. He treats Options A, B and C as separate entities, not realizing that the specific way in which Option A is covered often reveals everything he needs to know about B and C. By waiting too long on Option A, the window for hitting B or C—exploited spaces that are often built into the play design—can open and close without the quarterback ever seeing it.
Halfway through his second season, Griffin is unmistakably an unrefined quarterback. He is unable to consistently anticipate whether receivers are going to be open or covered. He tends to fixate on his initial read, which leads to trouble.
There were several illustrations of this in Washington’s Week 8 loss at Denver, where Griffin was hit (often viciously) on half of his drop-backs. Several of those hits, including the two plays broken down below, were enabled by his poor pocket presence and his inability to make multiple downfield reads.

Graphic A1
Graphic A2
Graphic A3
Graphic A4

The only thing worse than taking an unnecessary hit is taking such a hit while failing to see a wide open touchdown. Take a look at the play below:

Graphic B1
Graphic B2
Graphic B3
Graphic B4

Plenty of young quarterbacks struggle in the pocket like this. Griffin has the potential to be great, but he must get sharper as a pocket passer no matter how well he runs.

If Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton doesn't think much of your abilities as an NFL quarterback, he has no problem speaking his mind.

A.J. McCarron knows all about this. As does Tim Tebow and, yep, Brett Favre. And so does Robert Griffin III and Mike Shanahan, especially after Tarkenton went negative after the Redskins lost their 2012 playoff game to the Seahawks.

Now, during an interview with theMMQB.com's Jenny Vrentas, Tarkenton took another crack at Griffin, who's lost his starting Redskins job to Colt McCoy and who very well could be off the team before 2015.

Tarketon says he proclaimed two years ago that Griffin wouldn't make it, and one big reason why is because of the quarterback's attitude.

"He came into the league with an arrogance," Tarkenton said. "He goes into Washington, which is the worst place for him to go. They have been so hungry for a quarterback and for winning. They worshipped him. Here's RG3; he's our savior, he's our guy. His father gets involved and is in the locker room -- I have never seen a father in a locker room on Sundays. The owner, Dan Snyder, adopts him and becomes his best friend. So RG3, at 21, 22, thought he was Jesus, right? And he was making pontifical statements about how he approached the game. I was listening to him the offseason after his rookie year, which was not a bad year, and I'm saying, 'Holy s---, this guy is out of control with his ego.' That was the first sign you saw that he lacked leadership."

So, um, wow. What else you got?

"He was so into himself," Tarkenton said. "You know a quarterback's job? Make his teammates better. It's not about you; it's about your teammates. You've got to make them better, and if you don't make them better, you have no chance. And he was all about RG3. I sympathize with Jay Gruden. Gruden came out and pointed out, which is right, that he has no mechanics. He is a terrible passer, has no accuracy, he doesn't understand the offense, he doesn't read defenses, and he has no discipline. When he is supposed to take a 3-yard drop, he takes a 1-yard drop; if he is supposed to take a 5-yard drop, it's a 3-yard drop. There's no discipline and understanding of the defense because he is a pontificator. He will never make it. He will be out of football. He will be in the same graveyard as JaMarcus Russell and Vince Young."

As for the league's rookie quarterbacks, here's a quick synopsis of Tarkenton's thoughts.

Johnny Manziel: He's needs to prove he can be the right kind of locker room leader.

Teddy Bridgewater: It's unclear. He hasn't played great, but he hasn't played terribly.

Blake Bortles: "The jury is still out."

Derek Carr: "The jury is still out."

So, he doesn't really like anybody, huh?

"That's not a negative when I say the jury's still out," Tarkenton said. "In many [other] cases, after we see them play, the jury says 'no.' In these cases, I don't think the jury says 'no' on any of these quarterbacks, but they haven't played well enough to say 'yes,' either."

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-foot...l-never-make-it

Last week, the Washington Redskins benched quarterback Robert Griffin III. We’ve heard all sorts of explanations: that Griffin had taken too many hits; that the franchise needed to see what it had in backup Kirk Cousins; that head coach Mike Shanahan was trying to send the message that he’s the coach and Griffin merely the player; even that Shanahan was pulling a George Costanza and trying to get fired. There’s a kernel of truth in all of those explanations — well, probably not the Constanza theory — but after going back and studying the film from every game of Griffin’s last three seasons, I’m certain that Griffin’s play was the main reason he didn’t suit up Sunday and won’t play Washington’s final two games.

Despite the torrent of leaks, media reports, and bizarre press conferences, we know very little about how Washington actually came to this decision or about the team’s overall future direction. But we know one thing: Griffin will still be Washington’s starting quarterback in Week 1 next season. Despite the fact that Griffin hasn’t played well, despite the injuries, and despite the dalliance with Cousins, Washington simply has too much invested in Griffin to move on just yet. For now, Griffin’s future is still the Redskins’ future. But if the quarterback wants to keep his job long term, he must play better. And I think he will.

♦♦♦

I’m not sure any modern-era quarterback produced a more magical two-year run than Griffin’s 2011 and 2012 seasons; and if someone did, it probably didn’t span across his last year in college and his rookie NFL season. Griffin followed up his dazzling Heisman-winning season at Baylor with an even more impressive NFL Rookie of the Year campaign, passing for 3,200 yards, posting a 4:1 touchdown-to-interception ratio, and managing a stellar 102.4 passer rating. Oh, and he also rushed for 815 yards and seven touchdowns while leading the Redskins to the playoffs, doubling their win total from the previous season. But Griffin’s two-year run ended in grisly fashion, and the lasting image of his rookie campaign will always be his already injured knee finally giving out as he crumpled helplessly to the turf.

The offseason was filled with promises of Griffin’s triumphant return, and while he managed to start the season opener, he was a shade of his former self. It wasn’t just his running ability. Everything was off.

Coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s offense hasn’t done Griffin many favors. Last season, the Washington offense evolved into a dangerous hybrid of the West Coast, the Denver Broncos’ stretch running game, the Nevada pistol read-option, and the Baylor spread. With Alfred Morris carrying the load on the ground and Griffin slinging strikes off play-action, Washington was tied for first in the NFL in yards per play. But Griffin’s legs were the glue that held these pieces together. Defenses, while also trying to defend more traditional looks, faced the constant threat of Griffin keeping the ball on a read-option, running a bootleg pass, or simply scrambling for a key first down — or touchdown.

But while playing with a diminished Griffin this season, the Redskins seem to have junked most of the Baylor influence and instead alternated erratically between Shanahan’s stretch run game, the pistol, and the “bunch” passing plays that NFL defenses have faced for years. The Redskins have been running three disparate offenses that don’t add up to one coherent whole.

Washington’s disjointed schemes don’t entirely absolve Griffin, however. Game plan issues aside, Griffin still missed open receivers, throws, and blitzes this season. I don’t remotely buy the notion that Griffin “can’t read defenses” or is merely a “one-read quarterback” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), as I’ve seen him locate secondary receivers and I know he understands defensive coverages. Still, one doesn’t need to be Peyton Manning to know this isn’t how it’s supposed to work:

Griffin-INT

That kind of stare-down throw into coverage wasn’t Griffin’s biggest issue this season. Griffin’s footwork is what really got him off-kilter, though in fairness, this issue likely stemmed from his injuries and lost offseason. While much is rightfully made of a quarterback’s vision, a quarterback’s footwork is what tells him where his eyes should be in a well-designed passing attack. A quarterback’s every step should be tied to his receivers’ routes. “His feet are telling him when to move to no. 2 and no. 3” in his passing progression, explained current 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh some years back. Mastering that has been a recurring problem for Griffin since his surgery.

Griffin’s footwork not only hurt his reads, it hurt his accuracy. “Body position is absolutely critical,” Redskins quarterback coach Matt LaFleur recently told ESPN’s John Keim. “If you don’t have good body position, your balance is off and your accuracy will be off. It’s absolutely critical you get your body in correct position to make the correct throw.” LaFleur added that, for Griffin, this season has “been a constant work in progress.”

It wasn’t all bad, however. As you can see in this GIF, there were times this season when Griffin dropped back, manipulated the safeties with his eyes, and hit a secondary receiver.

Griffin-Read

It’s not a question of whether Griffin can do it. It’s about consistency. Griffin’s inconsistent footwork can’t be dismissed, but it is fixable. As LaFleur observed to Keim, it’s hard to focus on the fundamentals “when you have so much going on and [are] so focused on the game plan.”

There’s one area of Griffin’s game that truly concerns me, though. And if we believe Mike Shanahan, it was also his biggest worry: Griffin takes too many hits. More accurately, he takes too many big hits. Even more accurately, Griffin, more than any other player I’ve seen, seems preternaturally gifted at taking the biggest hit imaginable in almost every circumstance. It sounds like hyperbole, but in nearly every game there are three, four, five, and sometimes six or more times that Griffin goes flying as though some Wile E. Coyote explosive detonated in his face.

There are many, many, many, many examples of Griffin getting lit up, either resulting in injury or coming dangerously close. For Griffin, it’s partly about the read option, but not entirely. Eagles head coach Chip Kelly has a mnemonic for quarterbacks when they run the ball: “touchdown, first down, get down.” The idea is that the quarterback takes what the defense gives him — but absolutely no more.

“If [the quarterback has] open grass and there’s nobody in front of you, hopefully you’ll run all the way,” Kelly explained this summer. “If you can go 60 yards and run it in, God bless you. We’re not telling them to hook slide. We’re just telling them that when contact is imminent, our guys are not 250-pound bowling balls. They’re going to run you over.”

Griffin not only gets hit in the pocket and during read-option runs, but he also seems to find new and creative ways to take a beating.

Griffin-Block

It sounds harsh — and a little ridiculous — to say Griffin can improve as a quarterback by not running into walls or allowing himself to be tossed around like a rag doll when he’s trying to throw blocks on reverses, but it’s true. Hits like these have a cumulative effect that will diminish Griffin’s ability to play quarterback. As Kelly noted, quarterbacks “have to understand the best ability is durability. They have to go out and play the next snap.”

♦♦♦

Despite all that, I’m still optimistic about Griffin’s future. He was one of my favorite all-time pro prospects when he came out of Baylor, and, unless injuries ultimately shorten his career, I still believe he’ll be a fantastic NFL quarterback. Inconsistent play is the norm for young quarterbacks, not the exception. It’s hard to find a person who doesn’t think Andrew Luck will be a star (and I agree), but Luck still had a four-game stretch this season in which he threw two touchdowns compared with five interceptions; Colin Kaepernick appears to be playing better now that he has a more complete set of healthy receivers, but he has delivered some clunkers this year, including a game against the Seahawks in which he averaged negative yards per passing attempt after factoring in sacks and interceptions. And it’s only rubbing salt in the wound for Ravens and Giants fans to note that, at least statistically, Griffin’s 2013 season rates out better than all but two of Joe Flacco’s six seasons, and that it took Eli Manning until his fifth season to have a better passer rating than the one Griffin managed this year &#8212 a year pretty much everyone declared “awful.”

It’s going to be a long offseason for Griffin, particularly since it’s essentially already begun. He should feel secure that he’s going to be the team’s starter moving forward and be able to focus this offseason on becoming a more complete player. In Week 15, Cousins delivered some good and some bad, but finances dictate that Washington remains Griffin’s team, at least for now. And while I’d be shocked if Griffin’s former college coach, Art Briles, winds up as Washington’s next coach, the man who replaces Shanahan will surely have to present Dan Snyder and general manager Bruce Allen with a plan that prominently features Griffin.

Becoming a great NFL quarterback does not require a genius IQ or mastering a secret set of techniques. It requires understanding defenses, possessing the ability to methodically and consistently identify open receivers, and throwing the ball to those receivers decisively and accurately. To paraphrase Warren Buffett, the way one becomes a great quarterback is strikingly simple — but not at all easy.

For the next several months, Griffin should only worry about becoming a better quarterback. Getting the opportunity to do that is all any player can want. In the fall of 2014, we’ll find out how much progress Griffin has made.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/what-really-went-wrong-with-robert-griffin-iii/

Former Redskins tight end Chris Cooley has spent the past couple of seasons doing weekly film breakdowns of every Redskins starter on his ESPN 980 afternoon program. Whether or not you trust Cooley’s analysis, he offers a detailed level of praise and criticism that isn’t always easy to find, filled with specifics and a sometimes startling frankness.

This week, during his weekly look at the team’s offense, Cooley changed things up. He spent an entire half-hour dissecting the play of just one man: the quarterback, Robert Griffin III.

“What we are going to do is we are going to give incomplete to the entire offense,” Cooley said. “Because I don’t know how to grade them….I can’t grade the pass game. Our quarterback does not allow a proper grading of the pass game, because there was something I’ve never seen go on on a football field before.

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“There was a game plan initially installed, which was not run or operated in any way shape or form the way it should have been,” Cooley went on. “There was a quarterback not reading the field when he should have been, there was a quarterback scrambling when he [shouldn’t have been]….You can’t grade anyone else around Robert because of the way Robert played.

“And I want this to be really clear as we move forward with this breakdown,” Cooley said. “I’m not making fun of Robert. I like Robert. I like him as a person. This is not a personal attack. I am not going to make fun of him. I think he handled the media afterward improperly; we’ve discussed that. And I think he played poorly. And because of that, I’m going to now walk you through the game.”

What followed was 24 minutes of detailed criticism of Griffin’s performance, and it was ugly, far uglier than any analysis of Griffin’s leadership or social-media missteps or news conference hiccups. Cooley said Griffin often looked to the wrong part of the field. He said Griffin repeatedly failed on basic fundamentals. He said Griffin missed what should have been easy reads, didn’t see open receivers, didn’t interpret defensive formations correctly, didn’t understand basic game-management principles, could not allow his team to run any semblance of its offense.

In the second half, things bottomed out.

“At this point in the game, our coaching staff came up with the conclusion, now we will run simple, Day-One offense,” Cooley said. “This is all we can do. We have eliminated the game plan. We’ve [gone] back to Day One of training camp install.”

It’s kind of impossible to go through the entire half-hour in this space, and I’d encourage you to listen yourself. But I did go grab a few images to pair with Cooley’s analysis of some particularly bad moments.

Here’s the first play of the game, an interception.


(Fox)
“It’s a pop-pass that he is looking to throw to the tight end,” Cooley said. “He takes no drop, which is fine. Jordan Reed (the red circle) is open. It’s a read-option look. Jordan Reed is open over the middle. You throw the ball. Boom. Ball out, throw. You’ve got to throw the ball into coverage, and he’s not even that covered. Throw the ball.

“Beyond that, he’s got a little bubble screen out to the right. [The wide receiver, the blue circle, is] wide open. So if you don’t like the pop pass initially, you go bubble screen outside of that. That’s the read. The read is if they collapse on pop pass — tight end over the middle, which is a 10-yard, easy gain — go directly to bubble screen.

“He doesn’t go to bubble screen,” Cooley said. “He goes to scramble left. And in the midst of scramble left — which he cannot do, he cannot move to his left, at all… — he looks to see Niles Paul (the purple circle).


(Fox)
“He has a little bit of time to at least set his feet to throw to Niles on the scramble,” Cooley said. “But he just gives this side-hop and wing, with a side-arm. Do I downgrade Niles for bopping that ball up in the air? I do. But it’s a bad throw off a missed read — a double-missed read — on a scramble that I don’t like.”

Griffin’s throwing motion

“He’s short-arming the ball,” Cooley said. “He has bad technique, he’s not setting his feet right….He has the yips. He does have the yips, where the ball’s just not coming out of your hand right, so now you’ve aborted all technique, because you don’t have a feel for the ball coming out of your hand, and you’re getting this shot-put throw action. You’re aiming. He has the yips. He does. He just does.”


Griffin on the move

“He can’t move left, he can’t slide [his feet], he always turns to run,” Cooley said. “When he’s moving in the pocket, it’s always a running gesture, it’s always a tuck-ball-and-run gesture. It’s not keep poised, keep shoulder back, keep ball pressed back ready to throw, shuffle and slide. It’s a tuck-ball-run, then look to throw. This takes all vision off the field for Robert. When he takes all vision off the field at this point, he loses where he wants to go with the football. Which means unless someone’s coming across the field, directly into his vision, he is not able to find them or throw to them.”

Griffin’s second interception


(Fox)
“They come and show blitz,” Cooley said. “We have four slants: two inside slants and two outside slants. (The receivers are circled in red) The inside slants are pretty much dead [on arrival]. Their job is just to run through the inside defender’s shoulder, to create space for the outside slants. There’s one linebacker dropping, the guy that [eventually] taps the ball (the purple circle). As he drops, he drops directly to Robert’s left, which is where Robert throws the football.

“So if you’re looking at the line of scrimmage and you see one guy start to bail [to the left], work the right side of the field. See that coverage. Don’t just say ‘I have slants and I’m gonna throw slants.’ See where your backer’s dropping and work slants to the other side, because if you do complete the ball [to the right side], it’s a big play, if you work it away from where the backer’s dropping”


(Fox)

(Fox)

(Fox)
You can see the backer drop, watch Griffin’s eyes, move to Griffin’s left, and then tip the ball, leading to the game-changing interception.

The sacks

“He’s setting at nine yards, and he’s sitting,” Cooley explained. “He takes a four-step drop, he doesn’t make a throw, he’s unwilling. At nine yards, you’re a sitting duck. You have got to step up and slide, move in the pocket. You can’t remain at nine yards. Offensive linemen don’t block defensive linemen with their quarterback at nine yards. They block expecting their quarterback to step up at six yards.


“These guys are going to really struggle with the idea of how are we going to block for this guy? I don’t know how to block for this guy. He’s going to make us look bad. Because he’s setting up at nine yards, and I’m giving up a sack, but my entire career has been based on the idea that an edge set at nine yards is good enough for a quarterback to step up and throw the ball. He will not.”

Here you can see that Griffin sets up exactly nine yards behind the line of scrimmage. Then he is swallowed whole by the defensive line, still exactly nine yards behind the line of scrimmage.


(Fox)

(Fox)
The first red zone sack

The most disheartening sequence of the game came when the Redskins turned a first-and-goal from the 6 into a missed 47-yard field goal. Here’s Cooley on the first sack that contributed to that nightmare.


(Fox)
“He’s got hitches on the outside, he’s got an inside seam and an inside stick,” Cooley said. “It’s an easy cover-2 look. That means the hitches are dead on the outside. That means it’s a two-man read on the inside: DeSean (the red circle) is running a seam, Niles (the purple circle) is a running a stick route. Two-man read. Two-man show. He’s looking at the hitch on the [far left] side of the field. I’m like, what?


(Fox)
“Then he looks to Niles (purple), who’s open on the stick inside. You throw the stick unless the outside backer collapses on the stick, in which case you then would have the seam over the top. This is an easy concept….What’s more, he can run for six yards right up the middle of the field in the A-gap.”

Instead, with Paul breaking open, Griffin tucked the ball, meandered backward, and took a sack.


(Fox)
There was so much more. Incorrectly handing off the ball on a read-option when the fullback had already committed to blocking for the quarterback. Missing a “wide open” Pierre Garcon on a drift because he waited too long. Missing a 12-yard tight end hook — “the easiest throw in the book” — because he was reluctant to throw the ball to an open Jordan Reed. (“It’s just unbelievable,” Cooley wailed.) Overthrowing DeSean Jackson.

And then there was what Cooley called a “wow moment” late in the third quarter.


(Fox)
“It’s four vertical routes, trips to one side,” Cooley said. “It’s single-high coverage. Robert chooses to work the middle two vertical routes. If you’re going to work the middle two vertical routes, you work the inside interior receiver (Andre Roberts, in red) who’s running across the field vertically, and then you would look to see if the safety chooses the crosser (again, Roberts). If he goes with him, then you would throw the vertical route running up the numbers, which is DeSean Jackson (in purple).


(Fox)


“He works the middle vertical route (Roberts). DeSean Jackson is screaming open. I mean, this is DeSean Jackson. You’ve just created an entire lane to throw the football. And you continue to [look at Roberts], to where now you’re getting sacked. This was amazing. You actually start to throw [to Roberts], which would have been a pick. Hands down, a pick….


(Fox)
“You end up getting sacked. This would have been a pick [on a throw to Roberts]. And DeSean Jackson is walking into the end zone. DeSean Jackson’s part of the read. You didn’t have to fall into that. You worked the middle safety on the middle route [to Roberts], should have turned it down, to say thank you, you just gave this to me. I made a star, and said some of this would make a high school coach mad. Some of this is really easy stuff.”


(Fox)

(Fox)
And that all eventually led to Cooley’s grand conclusion.

“My ultimate evaluation is: he is gun-shy in the pocket. He is so so concerned about anyone putting a hand on him in the pocket…he doesn’t feel what’s going on around him, he doesn’t see what’s going on down the field. He’s not capable of moving and scrambling to make a good throw, he’s inaccurate when he’s on the move, and he’s really inefficient,” Cooley said. “And as a player, if I were on that team — and I will promise you, all the players would feel this way, because I would feel this way, and you’re wrong to not feel this way — he will not allow you to get better as a player, the way he played in this one week.


“This was one week,” Cooley emphasized. “And this was an evaluation of one week. I thought he played okay in Minnesota. So keep this in mind. If he continued to play like this for one or two more games, he really decreases the value of who he is moving forward at any point in the NFL, with any other team. He really hurts what he can do potentially. Because any scout, coach, fan can look at this film and say, if this is who he is, we can’t get better as a team.

“If I’m Sean McVay and Jay Gruden right now — no joke, if I’m them right now — I’m sitting in an office on a Tuesday, scratching my head and saying I don’t know what we can put in. We’re really struggling to execute and get the ball in the right direction on easy plays. Like, EASY plays. So I don’t know what we install. I’m not sure, as a staff, how you walk into that install meeting [Wednesday] and say these plays are gonna be great, this is gonna be good here, these spots are [gonne be] here against this coverage. Based on that performance, it’s a real struggle to continue to grow as an entire group of guys.

“That’s where I say you’ve installed an offense, and you want to get better, but the quarterback has to be good enough to see how other things work, see how what you’re doing can work,” Cooley said. “You can fail. You can throw the ball and fail. You can have misses. But he’s not even taking chances to miss.

who has some articles to post of Colt McCoys dad getting involved with this sons job.. lol..

In the face of adversity, the Washington Redskins have discovered two things about Robert Griffin III: He is an extremely hardheaded young man, and he has an interfering father.

Those dual issues will have a significant impact on owner Daniel Snyder after the season, when he decides what to do about the strained relationship between his star quarterback and coach Mike Shanahan. The issues have come to a head in the past two weeks and collided with the similarly strong-willed coach.

Griffin’s stubbornness was crystallized by a moment in a recent game. After he threw an errant pass and the offensive series ended, he came to the sideline and talked with quarterbacks coach Matt LaFleur, who was in the coaches booth (not on the sideline as originally reported here).

LaFleur, a former quarterback who never played in the NFL but has coached in the league for six years, began explaining to Griffin that part of the problem with the throw was his poor footwork, an issue that many observers around the league have noted about Griffin as he has struggled this season. As LaFleur continued to talk, Griffin grew impatient and brushed off the instruction.

“I just have to make that throw,” Griffin said, according to two team sources who were aware of the conversation. The reaction was not considered mean-spirited, but it was dismissive and spoke to the larger issue of how difficult Griffin has become to coach this season as he has struggled with physical limitations from his knee injury at the end of the 2012 playoffs.

In addition, Griffin’s father has increasingly become the kind of nuisance that some people warned NFL executives about before the 2012 draft. In recent weeks, according to two sources close to the situation, the elder Griffin has politicked Snyder to hire Baylor coach Art Briles, who coached the younger Griffin to a Heisman Trophy, to replace Shanahan.

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
That has come on the heels of the elder Griffin privately second-guessing Shanahan on his play-calling from the playoff game last year when his son suffered a significant knee injury, according to The Washington Post's Mike Wise. One source who has known the Griffin family for at least six years recently compared the elder Griffin to the late Earl Woods, Tiger Woods' father and a man who many believe lived in the reflective glory of his son’s accomplishments.

The elder Griffin declined to comment on the situation when contacted via text message.

“I am sorry,” Griffin’s father wrote. “No comments (are) necessary.”

To those who know the father and son well, none of that behavior is surprising. Griffin’s father was something of a stage dad at Baylor, talking to the media, doing videos on how he trained his son and even going as far as stretching his son in the locker room before games. Recently, he was seen in the Washington locker room talking to his son after a loss.

Multiple team sources said they believe the father’s influence and interference have made this season more difficult.

Or as a team source put it: “Robert is not a bad kid. That’s not it at all. But he doesn’t listen right now. You can be Tom Brady or Peyton Manning or the greatest athlete in the world, whoever. But if your footwork isn’t right, you’re going to miss. The ball is going to sail or you’re going to throw it in the ground or whatever. It just doesn’t work.”

That same team source agreed that Griffin has the kind of athletic confidence/arrogance that causes him to ignore the rules of physics.

Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
In Griffin’s rookie season in 2012, precision accuracy wasn’t as critical because his speed forced defenses to play him differently and opposing teams hadn’t scouted him thoroughly. Defenses had to play man-to-man coverage in the secondary and bring extra defenders up front to deal with Griffin’s running ability. His reads were much easier.

But as Griffin has struggled to regain his world-class speed and teams have come up with ways to defend him, there has been a significant decline in his performance across the board. His accuracy (from 65.6 to 60.1 percent), TD-to-interception ratio (20-5 to 16-12) and quarterback rating (102.4 to 82.2) have all declined sharply.

“You could see this coming in the offseason with the way he was working,” a team source said this week. “It’s not that he wasn’t working hard. He was. He was working to come back as quickly as he could. But he wasn’t working on the things to become a better (pocket) quarterback. ... Now, we’ve gotten this deep in the season, and he’s still doing things wrong, like his footwork.”

Shanahan, a man who once cut Denver team captain Michael Dean Perry in the midst of the 1997 season and went on to win back-to-back Super Bowls immediately thereafter, indicated the same thing in more measured terms last week.

“The biggest growth in a quarterback is usually between Year 1 and Year 2,” Shanahan said in a phone interview. “You have the opportunity to go back and look at the things you didn’t do well, learn from them, fix them and really digest how the NFL game works. That’s a huge step in the learning curve, and Robert didn’t really have that because he was working so hard on his rehab from his knee.”

That has fed Shanahan’s decision to sit Griffin for the rest of the season. Shanahan said he sees all the hits Griffin is taking, which can be partially attributed to his lack of understanding of what to do in the offense in certain situations. Finally, playing Kirk Cousins could raise Cousins’ value in trade this offseason as Washington deals with not having a first-round pick in the 2014 draft (a pick that will likely be one of the top five).

Scott Cunningham/Getty Images
Cousins got off to a strong start toward that end by completing 29 of 45 passes for 381 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions in Sunday's 27-26 loss to Atlanta. That game matches up with just about any performance by Griffin this season.

Furthermore, the logic of whether to have Griffin play comes down to whether he’ll listen, two team sources said.

“I hear people say that he should just continue to play. But if you just keep doing the wrong things, you’re not getting better,” one of the team sources said. “You just get more accustomed to doing the wrong things.”

While this gets to the core of the growing pains with Griffin, it doesn’t unravel the tangled relationship between Griffin, Shanahan and Snyder. Snyder has played a role in empowering Griffin’s ego by becoming overly friendly with the quarterback and even inviting him to his home for Thanksgiving, among other instances.

That relationship, according to members of the staff, has undermined Shanahan’s ability to coach Griffin. So did Shanahan’s decision to leave Griffin in Washington’s playoff game last season against Seattle. Griffin, who was obviously hobbled, eventually couldn’t continue and subsequently had surgery to repair a torn ACL in his knee. Shanahan has been continuously second-guessed for that decision.

Now, Shanahan is pulling Griffin at a time when the quarterback is relatively healthy. It's a fact that has confused Griffin even more, fracturing the relationship to the point that the two aren’t talking, according to the NFL.com's Ian Rapoport.

But as Shanahan pointed out last week, he only sat Griffin after consulting with Snyder.

“I could have done this without discussing it with Dan, but I wanted him to be a part of a decision this important and understand where I was coming from,” Shanahan said.

Thus, the question now is whether Snyder agrees with some in the organization that he needs to deconstruct some of Griffin’s confidence/arrogance before building it back up. And if so, Snyder needs to decide if Shanahan, who only has one year left on his contract, will be the coach to do the project.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/18911...anahan-redskins

Following Monday night’s 27-6 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III received a visit from his father in the locker room. According to CSN Washington the elder Griffin spoke to his son as he took off his pads, attended his son’s press conference in a separate room, and then returned to the locker room to continue the conversation.

Players will sometimes have their young children visit with them in the locker room after games as ESPN’s John Keim notes, but it is truly rare to see a parent. Washington has signs about no visitors in the locker room, so the media took note when RG2 appeared.

Click on the link to see the tweets of the reporters:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/11/robert-griffin-iii-dad-washington-redskins-locker-room

Who am I calling stupid?

I supported the signing of RGIII. I tried to keep things real by saying he does have some issues. A new poster said my comments were "not true." If they aren't true, that means I am fabricating things.

I did not FABRICATE anything.

Not sure why you have a problem w/that.

RG3 is an adult now, time for daddy to lay low.

I agree with the low-risk, potential high reward with getting rg3, and I hope he's been humbled enough to want to work his butt off to get better.

Rish..........the best thing for the Browns is for RGIII to succeed. I am supporting the move to sign him. I am hoping he improves on his weak areas. I am hoping he plays well.

Would you be willing to not draft Goff or Wentz or draft Goff or Wentz and have them forego valuable playing time on the incredibly long odds that RG3 could be that guy? That's what makes me so angry about this move.