A lot of Washington Football fans seem to consider 2012 their favorite season in memory…but it’s the next one that Robert Griffin III wishes he had back?
Of course, 2012 was RG3’s rookie year, and looked like the beginning of something big, until he injured his knee twice in the waning weeks – and in a video that JP Finlay played the audio of on Monday’s show, Griffin said that playing in 2013, where he was subpar compared to that rookie year, was ‘the biggest regret of my career.’
“Coming back and playing that season, pretty much 7-8 months removed from tearing my ACL, LCL, and meniscus is something know I shouldn't have done,” Griffin said. “But, when you're a player and you're in fight or flight mode, you're always gonna choose to fight, despite going back and looking at the film and understanding that I was nowhere near 100 percent. Sometimes we want something so bad that we're willing to hurt ourselves for it, and when you're 23 years old and you have no professional experience, it's very hard to make those decisions when all you want to do is play the game.”
And, uh, JP and BMitch don’t quite buy the hindsight.
“There's no reference to ‘All in for Week 1,’ which was his decision, and it was a marketing thing too with Adidas,” JP said. “I don't know, there's just a lack of self-awareness in all this.”
“Let's be real: a lot of things that happened with him, some things they could have handled him in a different way, but a lot of stuff happened because he was more concerned about what he was doing instead of his team,” Brian replied. “He says he did this for his teammates, but if he did it for his teammates, he’s have made sure he was 100 percent before he got on the field. I thought Robert had an unbelievable year, I was looking forward to him trying to change the way this world works, but if you are young and you don't know, you listen and listen to people who had been through what you're trying to go through instead of those who don't have a clue – and he seemed to listen to those who didn't have a clue, and those who said amen to everything he said, instead of making him think about it a little bit. Selective memory is what it's called.”
Bingo, says JP, who said ‘you're going back in time 11 years and ignoring the gigantic marketing pitch that was built around your return,” and that set BMitch off.
“That marketing pitch came from YOUR team, and let’s look at the video of the moment of impact or whatever it’s called, when he told Trent (Williams) ‘don't say nothing’ when he knew he was hurt – that’s not what you're doing for your team,” Brian said. “There are a lot of other things that I know personally that were said, that he went back because he was terrified of Kirk (Cousins) getting on the field. That is the reason why you played; you didn't play because of your teammates, you played because you knew someone else was doing things that were being asked of them, and you were trying to change the whole thing just to benefit what you wanted, point blank.”
“And, go one step further, in that off-season he demanded the offense change and all these other things - that's not for your teammates, dude,” JP said. “The offense that was highly effective, that won you Rookie of the Year and they won seven in a row. You don't want to change that for your teammates; whether if you think it's for your health is one thing, or if you think you have to establish yourself as a different kind of passer, I would say that’s another, but at this point, he's not lying saying that his biggest regret is going all in for Week 1 and pushing it to get back, and that kind of just set him down this path.”
In fact…
“I think the biggest regret should be going back in the year before, when you went out and you hurt yourself even more,” Brian said. “That might be the biggest regret. But that network he works for? That's what thy push: be as outlandish as you can, and disrespect all the people that you're supposed to be proud of support.”