Former Washington Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan let owner Dan Synder know he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the team trading significant draft capital to select quarterback Robert Griffin III back in the 2012 NFL draft.
“Dan knew I wasn’t very happy about what we did, but he wanted everybody to celebrate how smart we were, so we jumped on his plane and met the other owners on his yacht,” Shanahan told ESPN’s The Undefeated. “Everyone was celebrating. I just didn’t think it was very smart to give up that much for a guy who we didn’t even know if he could drop back and throw.”
Washington traded three first-round picks and a second-round pick to the St. Louis Rams for the chance to take RG3 at No. 2 overall.
Shanahan had serious reservations about the deal, but he wasn’t about to veto the owner’s decision.
“When I finally sat down with Dan, I said, ‘Hey, you own the team. We can work with him and do some things. But we haven’t seen anything on tape that warrants giving [up] this type of compensation,'” Shanahan said. “To me, it was absolutely crazy. But I told Dan that if that’s what he wanted to do, I’d make it work.”
Shanahan and the Redskins did make it work during RG3’s rookie season. The Heisman Trophy winner took the NFL by storm in 2012, throwing 20 touchdowns and rushing for seven more as Washington won the NFC East.
But everything started to crumble after the first season. Injuries played a part, and a chasm was forming between the young quarterback and his coaches.
According to ESPN, Griffin III sat down with Shanahan and two top offensive assistants early in 2013 and laid out a number of changes he wanted within the offense moving forward. The meeting only deepened the divide.
“When Robert is standing there going through all of that, I know it’s coming from Dan,” Shanahan said. “When Robert talked about ‘unacceptable,’ that was a word Dan used all the time. He was using phrases Dan used all the time. There’s only one way a guy who’s going into his second year would do something like this: If he sat down with the owner and the owner believed that this is the way he should be used.”
The next season, Washington won just three games as Griffin III’s passer rating dropped by over 20 points. Shanahan was fired in late December.
Griffin III struggled again in 2014 and then sat out all 16 games in 2015 as the Redskins made him the inactive, third-string quarterback. He signed with the Cleveland Browns after Washington released him this offseason.
Could all the drama surrounding RG3 been avoided had the Redskins went Shanahan’s way? We’ll never know, but it’s clear the former Washington head coach wasn’t totally on board with the team’s decision to move up and get Baylor’s Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback during the 2012 draft.
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