Robert Griffin III (Getty Images)
GROUNDED: Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III falls to the ground after twisting his right knee during the fourth quarter of Washington’s 24-14 wild-card playoff loss to the Seahawks last night. Medical personnel tended to RG3 (inset), who eventually walked off the field but did not return to the game. (AP; Getty Images (inset))
LANDOVER, Md. — Mike Shanahan sounded tortured and tormented when the questions came flying at him about why he left Robert Griffin III in the game, why he would risk his courageous franchise quarterback’s life, limb and career for the sake of a lousy playoff game.
Shanahan has been around long enough to understand the code of honor in the macho world of the NFL: that there is a difference between being hurt and being injured, and if you’re not injured, you play.
But there are times when the coach, in his position of authority, must take that decision out of the hands of the player, and this was one of those times.
No matter how persuasive, no matter how defiant, no matter how important the player is. No matter how many times you ask him if he’s OK. No matter how many times he tells you, “Trust me.” No matter if the medical man on the sidelines, in this case the esteemed Dr. James Andrews, clears the player to play.
Griffin’s problematic right knee betrayed him late in the first quarter, and even the sight of his rookie phenom hobbling around left end for a nine-yard game early in the fourth quarter could not convince Shanahan to remove him in the name of better safe than sorry.
And sure enough, sorry arrived with 6:19 left in Seahawks 24, Redskins 14 after RG3 fumbled a low and wide shotgun snap and his leg crumpled in such a gruesome way that an entire stadium and fan base fell hushed in silent prayer, fearing the worst, as he writhed and grimaced in pain, flat on his back outside his own end zone. And nobody particularly cared that Clinton McDonald recovered the fumble.
Jack Youngblood played a Super Bowl with a broken leg. Bill Parcells is forever indebted to Lawrence Taylor for playing through a torn pectoral muscle in the Superdome. On and on it goes. But that was then and this is now, when the league tells you how committed it is to the safety of its players, and this is the precocious face of a championship-starved franchise with a decade of glory ahead of him.
Thankfully, Griffin got to his feet, and FedEx Field chanted, “RG3, RG3, RG3,” and he walked off under his own power and signaled to the crowd and put his right arm around Shanahan, enough, finally, for him to surrender, with an LCL sprain at best.
“You have to go with your gut and I did,” Shanahan said. “I’m not saying my gut is always right, but I’ve been there before. … He’s a competitor and I’ll probably second-guess myself when you take a look at different … in the second half, should you have done it earlier? I think you always do that, especially after you don’t win.”
Griffin threw for 64 yards in the first quarter before the knee buckled. Two plays later, he hit Logan Paulsen with a 4-yard touchdown pass. The rest of the game he threw for 16 yards, ran twice for nine yards.
RG See Ya.
“We wouldn’t play him unless the medical staff said he was fine to play,” Shanahan said.
But here’s the damning quote from RG3: “I think I did put myself at more risk by being out there.”
Then he added: “But every time you step on the football field in between those lines you’re putting your life, your career, every single ligament in your body in jeopardy. My teammates needed me out there, so I was out there for them.”
Another Braveheart.
“I’m the quarterback of this team,” Griffin said. “My job is to be out there if I can play. … I don’t feel like me being out there hurt the team in any way. I’m the best option for this team, and that’s why I’m the starter.”
He was asked what would his reaction have been had Shanahan pulled him against his will for Kirk Cousins.
“I probably would have been right back out there on the field,” he said. “You respect authority and I respect Coach Shanahan, but at the same time you have to step up and be a man sometimes, and there was no way I was coming out of that game.”
Shanahan offered a lame response when asked about Griffin’s telling nine-yard limp to the sidelines.
“He said, ‘I promise if I have to do it again, I could go faster,’ ” Shanahan said. “He gave me the right answer.”
His eyes should have given him the right answer.