Cleveland Browns sign RG III, not Manziel II: Bill Livingston (photos) – cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio –The Browns have signed a former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from Texas who made big plays with his legs in college, was estranged from some of his teammates in the NFL, and in the end couldn’t beat out a couple of journeymen for the job.
Haven’t we seen this before?
Relax, he’s not Johnny
Before you can say, “Oh, no! Is Johnny Jackass back?” let me say, as a former “JJ” supporter, that this is not Manziel, but Robert Griffin III, from Baylor not Texas A&M, and he is the 2011 Heisman winner, not 2012.
The old Browns of Mike Holmgren, on his way to an umbrella drink festooned with lots of tropical fruit, wanted RG3 so badly he insisted the Browns outbid Washington, but were spurned.
The Redskins gave away so many draft picks to get Griffin that it seemed everything but the city’s eponymous monument and the team’s racist nickname was negotiable.
Wrecking the league
What Manziel blustered about doing in text messages, pleading to be drafted, Griffin actually did for one season. He was the Offensive Rookie of the Year, turning NFL defenses inside-out with the read option that is a staple of college spread offenses.
Griffin’s first coach in Washington, Mike Shanahan, apparently had not watched a college game since the quick kick was the rage, raving as he did about the audacity of not blocking the defensive end and instead allowing that player to dictate whether the quarterback ran or handed off.
In keeping or making a riskier pitchout, the defensive end determined quarterback choices as far back as the old wishbone offense in the late 1960s. Darrell Royal at Texas, whose team first used the scheme, didn’t much cotton to the idea of not blocking someone, but he got used to it.
Injury
Shanahan fed his own jones for physical violence by letting Griffin run wild. It was as if RGIII were playing some of those soft Big 12 defenses, not NFL hitters. Sample scores from Griffin’s Heisman year: 66-42 over Texas Tech, 45-38 over Oklahoma, 42-39 over Missouri, and 67-56 over Washington in the Alamo Bowl.
Along the way, Griffin injured his knee, then tried to play on it on a bitterly cold day in the playoffs against Seattle, stumping around like Long John Silver on the trail of pieces of eight.
Griffin did so until the knee frighteningly gave out on him and he crumpled while trying to recover a botched shotgun snap. The video is available on YouTube. It’s so gruesome, I don’t see the point in posting it.
To this day, many who saw that sickening moment think Shanahan sacrificed Griffin’s mobility on the altar of victory, except the Redskins didn’t even win the game.
Superstar to project
Griffin was such an athletic player that Shanahan gambled on winning quickly and later developing Griffin’s pocket passing skills with a long-range program.
It was understandable in a way. You don’t not play a quarterback who cost all those draft picks and still coach in the NFL if quick-trigger Daniel Snyder is the owner.
The knee injury was the start of Griffin’s decline. When Jay Gruden replaced Shanahan as coach, he decided Griffin did not possess enough fundamentals to beat out Kirk Cousins and ex-Brown Colt McCoy.
An ‘L’ in the locker room
Griffin lost the backing of his teammates when he said after a loss to Tampa Bay, after listing great NFL quarterbacks, “These guys don’t play well when their guys (the supporting cast) don’t.”
A quarterback can’t throw his teammates under the bus like that.
It was not Griffin’s best moment Still, he has to be more mature than Manziel, right? Bart Simpson was, among a cast of thousands of others.
Unscrambling a scrambler
It is hard to suppress the instincts of quarterbacks who have been successful runners and school them in the route progression and scheme recognition needed in the pocket. Griffin hasn’t proven he has the pressure awareness or field vision yet.
The Browns might seem to be running in place with a veteran starter and place-holder in starter Josh McKown and a scrambler as his back-up.
But forget about the running. The Browns will want Griffin to, for the most part.
Griffin threw for 3,200 yards, 20 touchdowns and 5 picks and then 3,203 yards, 16 TDs and 12 picks in his first two seasons. He has to have obvious NFL ability to do that.
The Browns have improved, as long as the S.S. Swanboat, Captain Mendacious at the helm, doesn’t set sail again.
