Robert Griffin III said he felt sharp after his first post-concussion practice on Wednesday. “I felt good – no symptoms of a concussion or anything like that,” Griffin III said. “No dizziness, or feeling off-balance, or things of that nature. So, I feel good.”
Griffin sustained a shoulder-to-helmet hit in the Washington Redskins’ week 5 match-up against the Atlanta Falcons. In a 3rd and goal situation with 6:25 remaining in the 3rd quarter, Griffin scrambled towards the right sideline and attempted to fight for yards that simply were not there. Instead of running out of bounds or sliding to live another down, Griffin received a legal blow to his head from Atlanta’s linebacker Sean Weatherspoon. Griffin didn’t return to the game, and was initially diagnosed as being “shaken up” until coach Mike Shanahan labeled the injury as a mild concussion in his post game presser.
The NFL wasn’t happy with the way Washington relayed information to the press box at FedEx Field – defining the injury as ‘shaken up.’ Contrary to the league’s beliefs, Thom Mayer, medical director of the NFL Players Association praised the way Washington handled their star quarterback’s concussion. Mayer has been a key figure in the collaborative efforts between the league and the players union to monitor adherence to policies for diagnosing and treating concussions.
“I’m supportive of how the Redskins have handled his case,” Mayer told USA Today. “From the moment the injury occurred, they have been a textbook case for how to deal with this, with respect to the protocol. They have followed it appropriately.”
Shanahan told reporters in his mid-week presser, “I have no idea how information gets to you in the box. I saw Robert when he came off the sidelines. He said he was OK, and I said, ‘No, you’re not OK.’ I said, ‘Something’s wrong. Your eyes are glassy.’ I said, ‘Go see the doctors.’ That’s the last [of it]. We’ve got a game going on.”
Griffin explained to reporters why he told coach Shanahan that he was fine:
“That’s the same thing I told Coach [Art] Briles at Baylor. I told him I was fine, put me back in the game. You want to play and your survival instincts take over and it just shows that I care about this team and I didn’t want to leave them hanging. I told him I was fine and he looked at me and told me I wasn’t. What am I supposed to say? I said, ‘Alright, Coach.’ They held me out. That’s what they were supposed to do. I came back to literally 15 minutes later and I started talking to them in the locker room – explaining everything that happened so they knew that I was fine. They told me it was too late and I had to shower up and watch the rest of the game. So, I did just that.”
This was Griffin’s second concussion in 12 months. He suffered one last season at Baylor University – absorbing a helmet-to-helmet hit against Texas Tech in November. Griffin did return the next week and beat Texas, which the rookie QB hopes is a similar outcome in the Redskins’ week 6 match-up against the Minnesota Vikings.
When any young player gets his “bell rung” more than once, there will be questions on if he will be leery of taking the next hit.
“For me, it is about being smart,” Griffin said. “Like Coach [Shanahan] said, it is a learning experience for me. It’s something that you appreciate things a lot more after something happens that can, not scare you, but definitely make you aware of things. My brain, my head, my future outside of football, my life is more important than trying to get that touchdown on third-and-four on the goal line. I just have to know when to run out of bounds and just know that what happens to me affects a lot of people. You just have to take that approach to it and know if I can run out of bounds, run out of bounds. If I can slide, just slide. But if feel like you can make play, go make that play. Things like that hit don’t happen all the time and they haven’t happened all the time for me. I’ll be smart about it.”
Griffin admitted that he should have thrown the ball, but it was a look that the Redskins’ offense hadn’t seen before.
“It was an exotic look – as we like to call it in football. That’s why I kind of stopped, to try to see if I could go back and try to hit, but I was indecisive. I decided to roll out of the pocket. You don’t want to throw it over the middle late. Hindsight – yeah, I probably would’ve tried to throw that ball. It was definitely a look that we hadn’t seen on film. Stuff like that happens sometimes. You’re going to miss some things.”
Health is bigger than the game of football and concussions are very serious, even when a player sustains a mild case of it. Griffin gave a glimpse into off-field reality when he spoke on the reaction of his parents after the hit -
“Not a strong reaction…Moms are moms. She probably had the strongest of them all, but they all came in the locker room. My dad came and found me and they made sure I was OK. I told them I was alright and they stayed a lot of the night with me that night at my house to make sure I was fine. There didn’t seem to be any difference. Woke up in the morning on Monday and my mom called me at 8:00 because I told her I was coming to the facility at 8:00. I was here and picked up and said, “Hi, Mom.’ She said she just wanted to hear my voice. That’s how moms are going to be. They’re going to worry about their children. And like my dad told me, he said he’ll be 100 before I am, so there won’t be a day that he’s not worried about his son. I love my parents for that.”
The good news is, Griffin is feeling better. But some believe he shouldn’t play this week. The 1989 Heisman Trophy winner, NFL veteran, and one of many mentors to Griffin – Andre Ware doesn’t understand why he’s rushing back to the gridiron.
“It’s crazy in today’s game and the way things are looked upon, all the stuff that’s out there about concussions, that he would even be rushed,” Ware, an ESPN commentator, told USA Today’s Christine Brennan in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s kind of crazy when you sit back and you think about it. With all the stuff surrounding concussions, if a guy’s not right you wouldn’t even think about rushing him back.”
Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer made a similar statement during his weekly “Glazer’s edge,” but added that if the league is concerned about concussions they need to make a concrete post concussion protocol. He believes that players that sustain concussions should not be allowed to play the next week as a precautionary tool.
Robert Griffin III will likely be cleared to start Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings. That’s good news for the Redskins, as they attempt to break an 8 game home-field losing streak. It remains to be seen if it’s the right decision, and we may never know. One thing is for sure, Griffin will make smarter decisions when running out of the pocket.
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