Redskins head coach Jay Gruden believes it is time for quarterback Robert Griffin III to step forward and elevate his play.
“He’s auditioned long enough,” Gruden told NFL.com. “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 playcallers, 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.”
Griffin has missed time and been ineffective when on the field for the 3-7 Redskins.
“His biggest thing, he’s been coddled for so long,” Gruden told the website. “It’s not a negative; he’s just been so good, he just hasn’t had a lot of negative publicity. 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.”
In four games this season Griffin has thrown for 763 yards, with 2 total touchdowns, 3 interceptions. He owns a QBR of 34.2 while the Redskins are 0-2 since he returned from a dislocated left ankle.
“It’s a production-based business,” he told NFL.com. “We haven’t won many games lately with him. 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.”
Griffin has heard the boos of home fans who have called for Colt McCoy to return to the starters role.
“We have a guy behind [Robert] that played pretty well, and people are looking, ‘OK, he’s 2-0,'” Gruden told NFL.com. “There’s always pressure on the quarterback to perform. And if you don’t perform, like any other position, somebody’s behind you pushing you.”
