The downfall of Robert Griffin III as Redskins quarterback will always be a captivating topic in D.C.
To think that someone could go from such extraordinary heights – entering the NFL as the 2011 Heisman Trophy winner and the second-overall pick, and leading the Redskins to the playoffs as the 2012 Offensive Rookie of the Year – to having his most vital gift robbed from him in the final game of his rookie season, only to be benched a year later, remains mystifying.
Former NFL tight end Logan Paulsen, one of Griffin's teammates in Washington at the time, provided some insight into how everything went so horribly wrong. Paulsen steps into the broadcasting world after 10 seasons in the NFL. He was just announced as the radio color commentator for the XFL's DC Defenders and stopped by 106.7 The Fan – which will broadcast the Defenders' inaugural season – Wednesday morning.
Asked how he viewed Griffin's leadership style, Paulsen said, "So when I was playing with Robert, he was very young, a very young player, and I think he came out of Baylor just winning the Heisman and he won Rookie of the Year, and so he didn't really have to have a leadership style, you know, if that makes sense, because he just could do whatever he wanted..."
The Redskins took the league by storm with their dynamic read-option offense in 2012, a scheme masterminded by then-head coach Mike Shanahan and his son, offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan.
It turned running back Alfred Morris, a sixth-round pick that year, into a star, the feature back in a Washington offense that allowed Griffin to decide between keeping the ball or handing it off in a split second at the line of scrimmage, based on what he was seeing from the defense. Opposing defenses were ill-equipped to defend, much less stop, the Redskins' fourth-ranked offense.
Griffin was a sensation whose career as a starting quarterback went up in dust one cold January evening in 2013. The 10-6 Redskins had just won the NFC East for the first time in 13 seasons and would host the 12-5 Seahawks at FedEx Field, where Griffin's day ended in tragedy, suffering a torn ACL and LCL on national television.
Griffin's subsequent rehab became a sideshow, with the quarterback insisting – in support of a national Adidas ad campaign – that he would return in time for Week 1 of the 2013 season, despite Mike Shanahan publicly insisting otherwise and a schedule that provided a soft landing with a Week 5 bye. Griffin did ultimately make that start but was never the same.
The Redskins opened the season 3-10 and, after a particularly dispirited 45-10 home loss to the Chiefs, Shanahan made the controversial decision to make Griffin inactive for the rest of the year, effectively benching him for backup Kirk Cousins, whom Washington selected in the fourth round of the same draft as Griffin. The Redskins finished 3-13 and Mike Shanahan and staff – save for tight ends coach Sean McVay – were fired the next day.
"Did you get swept away that rookie season how good he was offensively?" Junkies host J.P. Flaim asked Paulsen. "Did you just think it was gonna continue year after year?"
"Oh, 100 percent," he said. "So I thought... because when the quarterback plays well, it's good for everybody, so I'm like, I'm gonna get a second contract here or a third contract here at the time, and I'm gonna retire. I'm gonna play 10 years, because if Robert's here, I know this offense. Like, we're gonna be great. We're gonna win all these games and no one's gonna... And then, obviously that's not how it went."
"In your opinion, if you had to sum it up, what do you think went wrong?" he was asked.
"I think Robert – I like Robert, I think he's a good guy – he got a little ahead of himself too quick," Paulsen said. "Like he wanted to be something that he wasn't ready to be at that moment."
"A drop-back," Flaim chimed.
"Yeah, that's right. A drop-back quarterback," Paulsen replied. "And I think that he didn't understand fully at that moment like what his running ability was doing for the offense, and doing to opposing defenses."
"Cause we'd go into a game and we didn't even like need to study, really, like what the other team was doing," he said. "Because we knew they were gonna play an eight-man box and run Cover 3 the whole time, because of like the matchup problems that you get when a guy can run that way. And so when we got away from that a little bit, we started seeing more complicated stuff, more complicated fronts, more complicated pressures and..."
"He wasn't ready for it," Eric Bickel interjected.
"Yeah, I don't think so," Paulsen said. "I mean, who is ready? You know what I mean? At that age. But I think that's a big issue."
After six seasons in Washington, Paulsen – an undrafted free agent in 2010 (UCLA) – went on to play four more NFL seasons and reunited with Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco in 2017, his first season as a head coach. To this day (four days removed from the 49ers' Super Bowl meltdown), Paulsen regards Shanahan as the sharpest coordinator he's ever dealt with.
"Oh, 100 percent," he said. "Like him and Sean (McVay) are like really, really special people. I think from an Xs and Os standpoint, Kyle is maybe the smartest guy I've ever been around when it comes to football. Like, he just lives and breathes it like his dad."
"You put him above McVay even," he was asked, "Xs and Os-wise?"
"Yeah."
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