The initial premise of the statement, that to be great, you need great people around you is true. The statement about everyone needing to do better to be a great team is also true. But normally great leaders or in this case quarterbacks have the ability to make bad players serviceable, decent players good and good players great. They have the ability to unite and rally players around them to become an elite unit.
Also, a great leader normally doesn’t shift blame, regardless if the blame should be shifted. Part of being a leader is accepting the glory, but knowing if need be, you have to fall on your shield for your team.
These were not the wisest comments by RG3 regardless of the context, neither was the hat.
Now to be fair, RG3 did take a lot of the blame.
“We were playing good team ball. It takes 11 men. It doesn’t take one guy, and that’s proven. If you want to look at the good teams in this league and the great quarterbacks, the Peytons and the Aaron Rodgers, those guys don’t play well if their guys don’t play well. They don’t. We need everybody. I need every one of those guys in that locker room, and I know they’re looking at me saying the same thing.”
“We are 3-7,” a somber Griffin said. “Everyone in this [media] room knows that, and everyone in the locker room knows that. We can’t do what 3-7 teams normally do. We can’t throw knives and stab each other in the back.”
“When I say all of the sacks are on me, I’m saying I can do better and I have to do better,” he said. “I need every man in that locker room, player and coach, to look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘What can I do better?’”
Griffin added: “If one of my offensive linemen were up here or a back or a receiver and you asked [about the sacks], I would expect them to do the same. [We have to] take responsibility for it and try to find a way to get [the ball] out, try to find a way to change the protection and a way to pick it up. …I will be the first to say I could have done better, a lot better.”
I believe that RG3 can still be an effective quarterback in the NFL, just no longer with the Redskins. It isn’t just the media and fans that aren’t behind him any more, it appears there is a division within the locker room and that statement will not help.