While the current dysfunction in D.C. has manifested itself in plenty of new and unusual ways, the current sense that the franchise can’t get anything right currently flows from the circumstances surrounding a guy who seemed like the right man for the present and future only three years ago. But that dysfunction has been there long before the arrival of Robert Griffin III.
Fifteen years ago, the team entered the 2000 season with a Dream Team of free agents and a pair of top-three draft picks in Chris Samuels and LaVar Arrington, causing many to presume that another Super Bowl run was coming. The team didn’t even make the playoffs, and it feels as if the organization has never fully recovered from a failure that in most corners of the NFL has been long forgotten.
Arrington, who now works for NFL Media, hasn’t forgotten it. And he sees similarities to his career in Washington and the career of the team’s current quarterback.
“Every year that the Hall of Fame inductees go in and I watch it, I just sit there and I think about, I gave my best years to dysfunction,” Arrington told Sportsnet 590 The Fan, via Scott Allen of the Washington Post. “It just kind of bothers me a little bit . . . because it’s like if you had the structure in place to have success, my track record kind of speaks for itself. Guys that have come in there, Robert Griffin III, guys that have been there, their track records speak for themselves. How does a guy go from being special on every level, and then they come to the Redskins and it’s gone? The magic is gone. I can’t explain it. It’s almost a weird phenomenon, and I hate that I’m a statistic of that weird phenomenon.”
With the chances of success in Washington now seemingly destroyed, where could Griffin thrive?
“A different profession, probably,” Arrington said. “For me, I look at it like this: Once you’ve damaged somebody the way he’s damaged right now, I just think that it will be a long shot for him to turn out to be what he was and what people expected and anticipated him to be.”
Arrington may be right, but for now there seems to be no inclination to cut the cord on a guy to whom the franchise owes $3.249 million in 2015, whether he’s on the roster or not. Besides, if Griffin goes elsewhere and thrives, that would only punctuate the notion that it’s not about any given player, but that it’s about the “weird phenomenon” to which Arrington alluded.
Still, at some point the effort to justify a mistake becomes an even bigger mistake. It’s now clear that three first-round picks and a second-round pick shouldn’t have been invested in Griffin. The best thing the team can do is to cut him.
And the best way to handle that would be to tell Griffin that the team will cut him the moment he’s cleared to play following a concussion suffered two weeks ago. Currently, a $16.1 million injury-guaranteed salary for 2016 creates a potent temptation to exit from football not by admitting failure but by pointing to a head injury that, if he’s never cleared to play, would give Griffin nearly $20 million over the next two years.
The best move for a team that hasn’t made many good ones in recent years would be to flip that incentive around, tap into his lingering (if not flickering) confidence that he could thrive elsewhere, and tell him that, the moment he’s cleared by an independent neurologist to play, he’ll be released -- freeing the team of the potential $16.1 million obligation for 2016 and giving Griffin a chance to pick his next team after he inevitably clears waivers.
