Did the Redskins rush RG3 back? Did the Redskins bring back Robert Griffin III too soon? Mike Shanahan has noted on a few occasions, most recently during the Redskins’ OTAs in June, that the usual recovery time for an injury such as the one his quarterback suffered is seven to nine months. When Griffin said that he thought that being ready for training camp was “without a doubt” a realistic goal, Shanahan was quick to apply the brakes. “From the beginning they have talked about the recovery time being anywhere from seven months to nine months,” said Shanahan. “I think August 9 is seven months, and so we will just have to wait and see.” The Redskins will start training camp this Thursday, July 25. That’s two weeks before August 9. When asked in June about getting Griffin back on the field, Shanahan said, ““I am going to sit back and talk to the doctors and see what they say, how they feel and kind of go from there.” According to media reports, Dr. James Andrews conducted a couple of examinations of Griffin’s knee last week after the quarterback returned from his honeymoon, Andrews gave the green light for the Redskins to clear him. After doing some quarterback-specific drills on Monday, the decision was made to let him practice, at least on a limited basis. The Redskins were under fire as many believed that Griffin was brought back from his Week 14 knee injury took soon and, especially, that Shanahan should have taken Griffin out of the Seattle playoff game before his knee went from bad to much, much worse. The organization has every incentive to be cautious. So is it fair to say that they are rushing him back this time? We simply don’t know yet. There are plenty of pros and cons. It is possible that Griffin could benefit from some additional time off. Then again, you don’t want him to get rusty being unable to even play catch with teammates, which would have been the case if he had started on PUP. If he started training camp on PUP, which many advocated as the best course, They have seven weeks from today to get ready for the opener against the Eagles and shaving a few weeks off of that wouldn’t necessarily lead to a woefully unprepared RG3 taking the field on national TV. And Adrian Peterson spent two weeks on PUP last year and they season worked out for him just fine. Accurate on both points, but Griffin needs all the work he can get. Training camp time is much more valuable to a second-year quarterback than it is to a running back going into his sixth season as Peterson was last year. In the end, it comes down to a risk-reward analysis. There will be risk in putting Griffin on the field for practice on Thursday. There also would be risk if they waited two or three weeks or two or three months before having him step on the field. Football is a dangerous game. It’s even more dangerous to after you have had the same knee reconstructed twice. All they can do now that he has been medically cleared is put him out there and, as Shanahan said, “wait and see”.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 23:34:45 +0000
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