Losing Griffin Won't Be Immediate Fix

According to multiple media reports, the Redskins are “determined” to start a quarterback not named Robert Griffin during Week 1 of the NFL season.  Trades have been explored as well for the 2012 Rookie of the Year, but have been met with no interest by other franchises.  This effort to oust Griffin is now part of an intra-team spat, based on the following sentence from ESPN:

“High-ranking Washington front office officials and coaches want to move on from quarterback Robert     Griffin III, but are meeting resistance from team ownership.”

My readers may be similarly surprised to learn Pope Francis is, in fact, Catholic!  That Dan Snyder hinders the alleged football guys under him is nothing new, but this particular player has elicited a crazy saga of “Owner vs. Staff” in the last three seasons.  We all remember losing Mike and Kyle Shanahan due to their unwillingness to keep Griffin as the starter, a loss that looms somewhat large in my mind now that they have been vindicated by the successive Washington regime.  The father-son tandem saw the trouble signs two almost two years ago, and lost their jobs as a result.

But this is the Redskins, a team that hasn’t received much positive press since Joe Gibbs, so we should not be surprised.  Think back on that 2012 season, a blip on the radar that is overshadowed by events since then.  While only three seasons ago, Griffin’s magical rookie year feels more like that of Mark Rypien, given his struggles to recreate anything remotely resembling top tier QB play since then.  As is often the case in DC, nothing changes.

I won’t bore you with laying the blame for that.  Owner Dan has been a plague for this team, and deserves every word of criticism he receives from fans and media.  The bigger question is should the team move on from Griffin at this stage?

The answer is undoubtedly that they should, but it requires a key caveat.  Namely, moving on from Griffin likely isn’t going to radically change our win total for the year.  Love Captain Kirk or Colt you might (and there’s no doubt fantasy owners of Garcon and DeSean do), but what else about the roster says there is a chance this team reaches more than 6 wins?  Furthermore, barring a surprising run, are either Cousins or McCoy starting for the 2016 Redskins?

Both of these guys received chances last year.  McCoy did well in games he started, but the surprising change of pace for the beleaguered offense was uninspiring by other teams’ standards.  Certainly not all his fault, but he isn’t a long-term starter unless something radically changes.  It’s a similar story for Cousins, who played exceptionally well in two games last year before crashing to Earth against the Giants.  He has some promise and upside, and has shown he is an NFL talent, but the coaching staff has given him a chance before, and he couldn’t secure it for a longer period.  Doesn’t that worry anybody else?

That’s not to say Griffin has any future with this team.  His inability to move the ball at all in the preseason is finally the straw that broke the camel’s back for the coaching staff, and the fact that trade talks occurred at all shows some wavering on the part of higher officials as to Griffin’s viability on the team.  He has had plenty of chances to do well, and while this blog defended him last season, the debacle against Detroit this preseason and the resulting media storm have convinced me that the end of the road is near, and it can’t come soon enough.

But Redskins fans should be willing to accept that the roster issues with the team are legion.  One change, even at the most important position, likely won’t have much of an impact this year, especially given the talent levels of McCoy and Cousins.  Only the Bills and the Jets arguably have worse QB situations that the Skins, so a good rookie QB might be attainable in the next draft.  I think the folks in Ashburn should be looking to then, and hope other positions improve this year.  While the “win-now” modus operandi in today’s NFL can be infectious for starving fan bases, a longer term view is indispensable to bringing this team back from the grave.