Sunday, April 29, 2012

Robert Griffin III and Possible New Hope for the Skins


There's been a bit of a renaissance in Washington sports this spring.

The Nats are off to a torrid start, with particularly good pitching. The Caps beat the Bruins (last year's Stanley Cup champs) in Game 7 of their first round playoff matchup.  And on Thursday night the Skins drafted Robert Griffin III with the second overall pick.

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The drafting of Griffin is the most hyped Redskins story since Joe Gibbs came out of retirement in the winter of 2003.  There was an event at FedEx Field this weekend at which almost 20,000 people came out to watch a brief interview with him.

The coverage has focused on his outstanding work ethic and his likeable personality. Griffin is from a military family, and it sounds like his discipline comes both from his parents and from himself.

There was a last-minute critique by one writer who said that Griffin is a standard scrambling quarterback (reading between the lines = not smart), without a great arm, but most of the analysts are split as to whether Griffin or Andrew Luck (drafted first by the Colts) is more likely to be a long-term superstar.

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I don't know whether to be excited. The Skins have trained me well these past 20 years to be pessimistic. I really hope that Griffin can become the core of a team that stays together, plays together, and puts the game above the showboating. It would be fun for them to become consistently good again.

Our second pick was SMU's Josh Ribeus, a 6'2" guard, in Round 3. We picked Michigan State's QB Kirk Cousins in the fourth round, becoming the first team in almost thirty years to draft two quarterbacks so early (the Cowboys took Steve Walsh in the fourth round the same year that they drafted Aikman).  Leave it to the Skins' front office to take a bizarre approach to draft day!

Later in the draft we took Texas's Keenan Robinson, an outside linebacker.