A day after apologizing to RG3, Redskins head coach Jay Gruden again addressed his quarterback, and gave the impression that Griffin III is playing for his future.
“He’s auditioned long enough,” Gruden said. “Clock’s ticking. He’s gotta play. We’ll see. … We want Robert to excel, we really do. But the last two games, it hasn’t been very good, anywhere. We gotta play better around him. And the biggest thing for us as play-callers, and for him, we just have to come together and jell with plays he’s comfortable with. That takes time. But we don’t have a lot of time.”
The third year pro has 32 starts under his belt, or two full seasons.
Gruden reiterated that Griffin III “being coddled” probably set him back.
“His biggest thing, he’s been coddled for so long. It’s not a negative, he’s just been so good, he just hasn’t had a lot of negative publicity,” Gruden said. “Everybody’s loved him. Some adversity is striking hard at him now, and how he reacts to that off the field, his mental state of mind, how it affects his confidence, hopefully it’s not in a negative way. I read Drew Brees said after a couple interceptions, ‘I’m never gonna lose confidence, I’m gonna come out firing all the time.'”
“It’s a production-based business. We haven’t won many games lately with him,” Gruden said. “We gotta figure out a way to get in the end zone. We just have to score. I don’t care how we do it. If it’s running the zone-read, I don’t care. Quarterback sneaks, I don’t give a damn. We gotta find a way to utilize him where we can get productive drives and stay away from negative plays and have some consistency.”