Rushing RG3

Robert Griffin III was knocked out of three games in 2012.
Photo credit to WKYC.com.

There isn’t a whole lot of news in the NFL today that grabbed my attention, and I don’t want to start looking at what each team needs to do this offseason until next week or the week after. So I decided to stay local and offer my two cents on a report released by Adam Schefter this morning.

The Redskins, according to Schefter, believe that Griffin’s progress up to this point has been good enough that he could definitely be ready to start in Week 1 of the 2013 season.

Honestly, this concerns me more than a little. He had pretty invasive surgery to repair is LCL and ACL. They had to operate on both knees, so it isn’t just his right knee that they have to rehab.

Everybody points to Adrian Peterson’s swift return as reason for hope that Griffin III can do the same. After all, they both had their ACL’s hurt and Dr. James Andrews performed both procedures to repair them. In addition, RG3’s injury came only about two week later in the season as Peterson’s did last year.

But Peterson did not have work done on his LCL. Andrews did not have to go into Peterson’s non-injured leg in order to repair his injured ACL.

Most importantly, Peterson, as far as we can tell, may not have been 100% at the start of the 2012 regular season. Remember that he was nowhere near his normal self in the first eight weeks of the season. It was the second half of the season where he ran circles around defenders.

If RG3 is 99% in Week 1 of the 2013 season, I would not start him. Having full strength in your legs is much more critical for a quarterback than for a running back. You have to be able to drive through your legs when fitting the ball between defenders on a line. You have to be able to shift your weight properly when delivering a high-arcing touch pass on a corner route.

You might say, “Griffin III can do all that effectively if he’s 90%, so why are you being so conservative?”

I say that because Cousins has proven himself as a capable backup and he will be working this entire offseason as if he is the starting quarterback. After all, he is until RG3 is healthy enough to take over.

Cousins can lead us to wins in the early part of the season as long as the Redskins shore up their defense and keep their offensive line healthy like they did this season.

Robert needs to not rush his recovery. Do it right. He has to understand that if Cousins has to start the season for us, no matter how Kirk does, RG3’s fate will not be the same as Alex Smith’s in San Francisco. We have reached a point where players know that they can lose their job because of injury. Robert is not in that category, though. The Redskins gave up too much to get him and he’s too remarkable an athlete for Washington to replace him.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt if Griffin III can learn to protect himself a little better. Sliding, getting out of bounds. We don’t need him to get 13 yards every time he runs, we can settle for 6 and him getting out of bounds safely.

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Sunday Football Afterword: Week 15 Early Games

Kirk Cousins is now #2 on the Redskins all-time Rookie list
for single-game passing yards. Photo credit to SB Nation.

The Giants had not been held scoreless in more than 15 years until the Falcons, the Falcons, did just that yesterday. After Atlanta’s 34-0 route of the defending Super Bowl champions, the first home win against such an opponent in Matt Ryan’s career, I am left to guess whether the game did more to answer questions about the Falcons or raise questions about the Giants.

I’ll cop out and say it was a little of both. This game said a lot about the Falcons character. It remains to be seen what that would count for in the playoffs, but this was an important statement for them to make. New York, on the other hand, has been back and forth the past five weeks and even a bounce-back game against Baltimore next Sunday will do little to immediately answer questions about them.

Denver’s win in Baltimore felt like a bigger blowout than the 34-17 final score indicated, but I found it disturbing that Joe Flacco said it feels like they are 0-14. That game, while important, was not the end-all-be-all of the season, and Flacco’s comments should be very indicative to Ravens fans of what kind of postseason they can expect: a short one.

Green Bay got out to a nice lead against Chicago. They let the Bears claw their way back, but did not give up the lead as they clinched the NFC North and put Chicago in serious danger of missing the playoffs with three NFC East teams to contend with. Brandon Marshall’s press conference really got to me, I feel for the guy, but that isn’t enough if the team doesn’t make plays.

Credit Indianapolis for fighting in Houston. The Texans were playing for the AFC South title while the Colts were playing for a chance to take it from them when they meet again in Week 17. The Texans took care of business to clinch their second consecutive division crown, and the second in franchise history.

There isn’t much to say about the game in Miami. The Dolphins kept their near impossible chance of making the playoffs alive with a 24-3 win, but it was against the Jaguars so I can’t say enough how little that means.

Tampa Bay is done. They have not officially been eliminated, and neither has New Orleans, but the Saints are a whole lot closer to the playoffs after yesterday’s game. After Tampa Bay got upset by the Eagles last week, I expected a bounce-back for them. I didn’t think they would win, simply because the game was in New Orleans, but I never expected them to get shut out by the Saints. This is one of the worst defenses in the league and Tampa Bay, a team with one of the best balanced attacks in the NFL, could not put up one point in a 41-0 route. Turns out the Bucs were pretenders after all.

Adrian Peterson carried the Vikings to a big win in St. Louis. The Rams were fighting to keep their slim playoff hopes alive, and now they have been all but snuffed out. Peterson topped 200 yards for the second time this season. Last time it wasn’t enough, but yesterday it was. The Rams put up a valiant effort and late in the game it looked like they might make it back, but Minnesota had put up enough to outrun St. Louis in a 36-22 win that has them now ahead of Chicago based on tiebreakers.

I had to save the Redskins for last. You all know I am a huge fan, and yesterday was a game worth getting excited about. Kirk Cousins struggled early in the game, throwing a pick that lead to a Cleveland touchdown, but he settled down, Kyle Shanahan delivered an excellent game plan, and the Redskins get into a groove that the Browns could not knock them out of. Everything went Washington’s way yesterday, including a fumble by Santana Moss than Pierre Garçon somehow ended up on top of. Considering those breaks never go the Redskins’ way, I think it’s safe for Redskins Nation to start getting pumped.

Check back later for my Sunday Football Afterword for the six late games. Thanks for reading everyone!

Sunday Football Afterword: Week 14 Early Games

Kirk Cousins got the call in the 4th quarter and kept the
Redskins in the first bubble spot in the NFC Playoff race.
Photo credit to The Washington Post.

A late start and an unexpectedly busy afternoon kept me from writing my usual Monday posts, so today I am writing (and publishing) this post and then splicing my regular second Monday post with my usual Tuesday post. On a side note, this is my 200^th post on this blog, so thank you to all you who keep coming back and reading my work!

Sunday’s early games saw several unexpected results. They also lent insight into what we may see in the postseason. The Falcons and Bears both lost to lesser division opponents Carolina and Minnesota. Pittsburgh, who seemed to be right back in the playoff picture, suffered an upset and major setback against San Diego, helped only by Cincinnati’s late collapse against Dallas and a mind-blowing comeback by the Redskins at home against Baltimore.

Buffalo played a close game at home against the Rams, but the playoff push was apparently enough to send St. Louis home with a win, unlike some other playoff contenders mentioned above.

Kansas City’s motivation seemed to only last a week as Cleveland ran all over them in a 30-7 romp. Worse yet for the Chiefs is the likely loss of Dwayne Bowe for the rest of the season, although I guess if ever there was a time when losing one of your best players to IR is acceptable, it would be in their current situation.

Indianapolis pulled out another come-from-behind win against Tennessee and is nearing a playoff birth. The Jets, meanwhile, put off their playoff elimination another week with a 17-10 win in Jacksonville.

Tampa Bay, meanwhile, was seriously set back in a very close, very packed NFC wild-card race by losing 23-21 at home against Philadelphia in Nick Foles’ first win as a starter.

Washington kept pace with Dallas, who edged the Bengals in Cincinnati, by overcoming an 8-point deficit late in the fourth quarter with Kirk Cousins under center following a knee injury to RG3. Cousins overcame 2^nd & 20 following by an intentional grounding call against Griffin III with a 15-yard completion followed by an 11-yard touchdown strike to Pierre Garçon on a scramble. He then ran the ball in himself for the conversion. A huge defensive stand in overtime opened the door for a 60-yard punt return followed by a game-winning field goal by Kai Forbath. RG3 is not expected to miss much time as he was diagnosed with a knee sprain and is day-to-day, but I think the team and fan base would have been comfortable with Cousins leading the team if RG3 were to miss extended action.

The Falcons lost their second game of the season but still have a good chance to gain home-field advantage, as their closest competitor, San Francisco, is a game and a half back with three games left. The Bears loss to the Vikings was very costly as Green Bay’s later victory gave them control of the NFC North and puts a target on Chicago for the wild-card chase pack.

The Steelers loss did not lose them the sixth postseason spot in the AFC, but it puts the Jets just one game out with three games left, and the Jets have limped into the playoffs before only to upset better teams on the way to surprising AFC Championship appearances.

Check back later for my Sunday Football Afterword Deluxe for the four late games and the Monday Night matchup. Thanks for reading everyone!

Sunday Football Afterword: Week 5 Early Games

The Colts earned an emotional win just a week after learning
head coach Chuck Pagano is fighting leukemia.

There were plenty of headlines to make Sunday’s games exciting, even when the games themselves weren’t so much.

Baltimore played to a 9-6 win in Kansas City, hardly a must-watch game. Baltimore gave up 140 rushing yards to Jamaal Charles, but Kansas City turned the ball over four times. It was possibly the most boring game of the day, despite several blowouts during the later games. Matt Cassel went down with a head injury, and the crowd began cheering. It is still not apparent if the cheering was for Cassel getting injured, for Brady Quinn entering the game, or for Cassell when he got up and was leaving the field, but it was enough to send one Chiefs player on a tirade about football players not being gladiators.

I fully expected Cincinnati to beat Miami, but not only did Andy Dalton continue his streak of consecutive games to start a season with at least one interception (don’t worry Redskins fans, he’s nowhere near your record), he threw two picks on the game, the second one on Cincinnati’s last drive of the game. Miami won 17-13.

Cleveland forced an early Ahmad Bradshaw fumble and turned it into seven points on a powerful Trent Richardson run. A few minutes later a big touchdown pass gave Cleveland a 14-0 lead and suddenly everyone in America was put on upset alert. It was all for naught as Eli Manning kept his cool and led his team to a 41-27 rout of the still-winless Browns.

Michael Vick’s turnover issues seemed gone after Philadelphia’s best game of the young season, a legitimate victory over the Giants in Week 4. They came back in full force yesterday as he fumbled twice and Pittsburgh won on a game-winning field goal by Shaun Suisham.

Atlanta and Washington played one of the more exciting games of the day. Washington had their best defensive game of the season, and it came against one of the best offenses in the NFC. For once it was their offense that struggled at times, especially on third down. Robert Griffin III went down in the third quarter with a concussion (the Redskins could be in trouble about how they reported it, though) and Kirk Cousins came in and threw a 77-yard touchdown pass for his first career touchdown. He struggled afterwards, mostly due to a worn-out offensive line not giving him time to set, and threw two interceptions that kept a possible comeback from forming. Atlanta is now 5-0 for the first time in franchise history and the Redskins have lost 8 consecutive home games. They play Minnesota at home next week.

The biggest story line from the early games came out of Indianapolis. In a storybook ending, the Colts overcame several lead changes to beat the Packers and secure a game ball for hospitalized head coach Chuck Pagano, who was diagnosed with a treatable form of Leukemia last weekend. Reggie Wayne, who had ties to Pagano from his college days and accepted a smaller contract than he deserved in order to stay in Indianapolis and play for Pagano, has a career-high 212 receiving yards, including several key plays in the fourth quarter while battling cramps.

Keep Coach Pagano in your prayers. The form of leukemia he is battling is one that many adults have been known to recover from, but there is no telling how late he may have been in getting it diagnosed. To show your support, include the hashtag #CHUCKSTRONG on tweets.

Check back a few hours for my recap of the later games. Tomorrow I will publish my recap of tonight’s Monday Night Football matchup between the unbeaten Houston Texans and the reeling New York Jets, who have said they plan to make more use of Tim Tebow in the game.