Football super-agent Ben Dogra must be pulling his hair out every time former Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan gets near a mic. Shanahan was the sideline boss during the rise and fall of quarterback Robert Griffin III’s tenure in Washington. He watched the former Baylor star reach great heights and win Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2012. Following a great rookie regular season, he then played RG3 that same postseason on a potentially catastrophic knee injury and watched as the worst happened.
His knee crumbled under pressure and required ACL and LCL surgery in his first NFL offseason. The next best thing in the NFL was walking on pins and needles after just one year. Though Griffin missed the entire preseason, he was controversially given the nod to start the 2013 season opener. His numbers dipped and he failed to replicate his performance from the prior year. He would be unseated as starting QB by Kirk Cousins in mid-December.
This year the team announced that they would keep Griffin but he will no longer be the starter in the District Capital. As it stands, the team is given +12,500 odds to win Super Bowl 50 according to NFL betting site TopBet. The future isn’t great for Washington and it’s now looking even worse for Griffin thanks to his former coach.
In February, Shanahan revealed that bringing Griffin to Washington wasn’t his idea. He wanted Peyton Manning, who had recently departed from the Indianapolis Colts. He then told a local radio station in May that injuries had nothing to do with the quarterbacks decline. “He hasn’t done things the NFL asks you to do.” Shanahan wasn’t done there though – not by a long shot.
Following the Redskins decision to play Cousins over Griffin in August, the coach praised the new starter calling him a “franchise” and a “top ten quarterback”. Now in a recent interview with Dan Patrick, Shanahan questioned the former starter’s willingness to adapt to win. He also, once again, praised the current state of the Redskins with Griffin on the bench.
Clearly there is some bad blood between the former coach and the former Rookie of the Year. Why Shanahan has been airing out his dirty laundry every chance he gets though, is an interesting question. All in all, the bottom line to Dogra is will RG3 make it to his final year in Washington?
He currently has two years left on his deal and next year he gets a pay raise from his current base salary of $3.26 million to $16.1 million. Needless to say, Ben Drogra’s fingers are crossed that the Skins hang on to the one-time Heisman winner and that Mike Shanahan stops tearing apart his client.