ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The trial of Robert Griffin III — whether or not he can be an elite NFL starting quarterback — continues Sunday at FedEx Field when the Washington Redskins host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Plenty of seating is available in the courtroom. If you are a fan of the defendant, I’d suggest you attend. The defendant should make a strong case for himself. He needs to.
One of his expert witnesses — Redskins coach Jay Gruden — hasn’t exactly helped the defendant during his testimony.
It was Gruden himself who put the defendant on trial when he declared “the jury is still out” on Griffin — and he continues to raise doubts in the courtroom.
If the jury consists of his peers — his teammates — that might be considered a hung jury based on what DeSean Jackson said on Fox Sports last Sunday, a week the Redskins were off and had no business making headlines.
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Like Gruden, Jackson — who Griffin reportedly recruited to sign with Washington after the receiver was released by the Philadelphia Eagles — raised doubts about the defendant while seemingly called as a character witness to defend him, standing up in the locker room to do so.
“At the end of the day, you have media, you have players in the locker room that, you know, try to divide and conquer,” Jackson told Fox Sports 1. “Some guys say they like Colt. Some guys say they like Kirk. But at the end of the day, for players, that’s not our decision to make. As long as we’ve got to go out there and do our job and put our best foot forward, that’s the best thing I can say. But I think RGIII does a great job of coming in early, doing everything you need to have in a quarterback to be that characteristic guy, to be that guy of the franchise. He does that. He’s young, so at the same time, he’s always one of the vocal leader guys and he’s standing up and doing what he needs to do.”
With that testimony, Jackson made the case that the locker room has been divided about Griffin — a bombshell, even if those reports surfaced last year as well. This was the first time one of his teammates said some Redskins players would rather see Kirk Cousins or Colt McCoy at quarterback than Griffin.
Take some time for that testimony to sink in. Griffin was the Heisman Trophy winner the franchise traded three first-round picks and a second-rounder for the chance to draft with the second pick of the 2012 NFL draft. He was NFL Rookie of the Year and led the team to an NFC East title.
Yet some Redskins players would rather see Cousins — the team’s fourth round 2012 pick who has a 1-7 record as the team’s starting quarterback — take the field over Griffin.
More disturbing is that some Redskins would rather see McCoy than Griffin. Granted, McCoy led this team to two wins, including the impressive Monday night victory in Dallas over the Cowboys. But he has had a journeyman NFL career at best since being drafted in the third round by the Cleveland Browns in 2010, and was signed in April by Washington to be the third-string quarterback.
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Yet some Redskins players would rather see him behind center than Griffin.
Part of the problem is that it has been so long since we’ve seen an elite performance from Griffin that it seems like a distant memory. We’ve seen flashes of excellence, mixed in with inconsistency.
It’s been too long since we’ve seen the kind of quarterback Gruden described here to reporters last week, trying to explain the locker room divisions.
“I know there’s great quarterbacks in the history of the NFL,” he said. “If you look at them, I don’t think everybody liked them in their locker room, but they all respected and they knew that come game time, crunch time, he was going to make a play. That’s what it boils down to. He has to get the most out of everybody around him. They all have to want to play their best for the quarterback.”
If Griffin was ever going to make his case to the jury, it is this Sunday against a 1-8 Buccaneers team before a gallery filled with fans of the home team.
• Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 and espn980.com
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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