With unmatched speed, skill and drive, RGIII’s potential is off the charts. So is his risk of major injury.
You have to understand that you don’t understand. Unless you’ve put on the pads and taped up the ankles and had finger-long, 22-gauge injections of ketorolac or cortisone or bupivacaine injected into your knees, shoulders and ribs to numb your senses, you don’t understand. If you haven’t stood under those lights, hyped up on a cocktail of stimulants and anti-inflammatories, on the stage you’ve chased for as long as you can remember, with tens of thousands around you screaming for entertainment, next to 44 other people just like you, you don’t understand. If you haven’t felt the pressure to perform, the expectation to be magically impervious to pain, the anxiety of losing your spot, the breath down your neck from coaches, teammates, fans and media ready to carve up anyone who dares to not play hurt, you don’t understand. If you’ve only watched football on television, which does a tremendous disservice to the speed, aggression and brutality of the game, and never seen tremendously athletic 300-lb. men violently crash into each other for an entire afternoon up close, you don’t understand.
That’s why you won’t understand Robert Griffin III. Not just one of the most talented quarterbacks to enter the NFL in years, but one of the most talented men in general, Griffin is the kind of player who defines an era. Exceedingly intelligent, lightning fast and built solid at six-foot-two and 217 lb., the 23-year-old has everything you could ever want in a football player. And that includes a reckless abandon when running the ball and the willingness to put everything on the line, his body and mind primarily, in pursuit of those last few yards. He is new football—the embodiment of the North American factory-like process now used to breed athletic stars. But as the dynamics of preparing young men to be football players have changed, so too have the realities of playing the game at the highest level. Everyone’s bigger, everyone’s faster, everyone’s stronger. The collisions are ridiculous. The term “car wrecks”—as NFLers are fond of calling them—doesn’t really do them justice. And that’s why, if he doesn’t stop doing some of what makes him so great, Griffin may be out of the game before he’s 30.
First there was the concussion. It was week five against the Falcons. Griffin was playing well and taking very good care of the football. But as he took a shotgun snap on third and goal with the game tied in the third quarter, the defensive pressure came quick. He abandoned the pocket, rolling to his right without an open receiver or a plan. He hesitated for a moment and decided he would have to go it on his own, moving further to his right, trying to turn a corner and head for the end zone. But he’d sacrificed too much of his time and space and found little room to run, which forced him into an awkward, last-minute slide toward the sideline. That’s where Falcons linebacker Sean Weatherspoon drove his 244 lb. directly into Griffin’s head, smashing his brain into the side of his skull. Griffin left the game and did not return, but he played the next weekend.
Next was the knee, part one. It was second-and-19 with less than two minutes to play in a week-14 game against the Ravens. The Redskins were trailing by eight and needed a win to maintain any hope of a playoff berth. Griffin took the snap in the shotgun and dropped back a few steps as Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo shot straight through the line of scrimmage toward him. Almost any other quarterback would have been meat, but Griffin is a different kind of guy, so by the time Ayanbadejo got into the backfield, Griffin was gone, scrambling to his left, deciding to make something out of a broken play with his legs. He shot upfield like the world-class sprinter he is (he made the semifinals of the 400-m hurdles at the 2008 U.S. Olympic trials), picking up 10 yards in an instant and spinning through a tackle as he crashed to the ground. He had seen absolutely everything except for what was beside him: Ravens nose tackle Haloti Ngata, a 340-lb. behemoth, who crashed into Griffin’s right leg, warping it over Ngata’s body like a flexed windshield wiper. Griffin was helped to the sidelines, where team doctors cleared him to re-enter the game. But after just four awkward snaps that saw Griffin unable to do anything of consequence with his right leg, he was finally removed from the contest. He missed just one game with a sprained LCL, returning to competition 13 days later.
Finally, there was the knee, part two. If you’ve been following Griffin’s career path, this is the one you probably remember best. After two weeks of steady if not stellar play on his throbbing knee—including a week-17 win over the Cowboys in which Griffin ran for 63 yards and a touchdown to help clinch the Redskins’ first division title since 1999—Griffin entered the post-season as the first rookie quarterback to start a playoff game for the Redskins in 75 years. The knee held up. Even after an awkward plant in the first quarter left Griffin screaming on the ground, the knee held up. Until it didn’t. With 6:26 left in the fourth quarter, a botched snap dribbled between Griffin’s feet. He tried to scurry after it, but as it took a weird bend, so too did his knee, which seemed to succumb below him. The ligaments, cartilage and menisci that hold it all together had finally had enough. He left the game and did not return as the Redskins’ season ended without him.
An MRI revealed tears in both Griffin’s LCL and ACL, the sorts of injuries that would probably keep you pinned to the couch for a good six months. Griffin had surgery in early January, using tissue from his left knee to repair the ligaments, and just a month later he was already working out. Still, most doctors didn’t think he would have a chance to start the 2013 season.
Well, here we are, about to start that season, and Griffin is grumbling publicly about his slow, team-mandated rehabilitation plan in training camp. The Redskins held Griffin out of their first three pre-season games and didn’t let him take first-team snaps until four weeks into camp. “I can’t B.S. this answer—no,” Griffin said when asked if he agreed with the Redskins’ plan to bring him along slowly in the interest of preserving his body. “I want to play.”
It’s as if there is a fatal flaw to Griffin, this perfect football machine: He can’t stop. He can’t stand not playing and can’t find it within himself to rise above the NFL’s play-until-you-cannot-walk culture and make decisions that will preserve his career. Part of this is not his fault. The NFL is a crazy place. Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler once sat out the back half of an NFC championship game with a worse knee sprain than Griffin’s—think about that—and was admonished by television pundits and even fellow NFL players, who called him out through social media for not playing through the pain. But if anyone could subvert that grossly confused culture, it’s likely Griffin, one of the most transcendent, confident, universally adored players to join the league in years.
What is maybe most unsettling about all of this is that Griffin is an incredibly bright person. He graduated both high school and college early, taking heavier course loads and making dean’s lists while running track and playing football. By the time he was ready to enter the NFL draft, he had already begun graduate studies in communications. If he didn’t play football, he might have been your boss. So it’s not like he doesn’t understand what’s happening here. He understands the risks he’s taking. He understands you like watching it; that the brutality is entertaining to you. That the stuff of legends and NFL Films montages is built on players performing through injuries, showing their grit, heart and determination as they tough it out in the name of victory. That the entire system—its sole purpose being to make money off you, by the way—is designed to encourage and reward the play-through-the-pain mentality. That you will be posted up on the couch some Sunday this fall, watching the carnage unfold around him, unable to look away as he lays his livelihood on the line for a few extra yards.
Modern football isn’t safe. Bones and ligaments and cartilage are not constructed to absorb the punishment football players take on a weekly basis. This is not to even mention the human brain, our anatomy’s most vital organ, the one that most NFL players decide to lead with in their tackles. It’s no wonder so many of them can’t recall how many concussions they’ve had, how many times their neurons have been rearranged—each instance makes them more likely to suffer irreversible brain damage and dementia. Griffin could become a pocket passer and avoid much of that damage. He’s certainly got the arm for it. He could sit back and throw downfield, chucking the ball out of bounds at the first hint of trouble. He could play like that well into his late 30s. But that runs counter to the innate instincts that make Griffin so great—and, quite honestly, such a treat to watch. His talent level and risk factor simultaneously being so far off the charts are what makes him appointment viewing.
Robert Griffin III seems to know that his vocation is in direct conflict with his welfare. He knows he’s a target. He knows he’s sacrificing his health for your entertainment. He knows this game could shave years off his life. But it’s that same insular, embarrassingly macho, don’t-be-soft culture that also keeps him from walking away. Or even saying anything about the harsh realities he has come to understand. “The experience last year of playing through the injury, being hurt out there, showed me a lot about football,” Griffin says. “And that’s something that I’ll keep to myself.” He’s accepted his fate. And you can’t possibly understand.