After being the most popular man inside the beltway a year ago, Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III has heard more criticism this year.
But he said he had “tough skin,” and the discipline his parents raised him with are helping him deal with the recent wave of questions.
Whether from the local media or even Redskins legends, Griffin has taken more heat this season, something that seemed impossible a year ago.
“You take life as it comes. Life’s going to throw you curveballs sometimes. You just have got to figure out which ones to try and hit,” Griffin said, via Mike Jones of the Washington Post. “Right now, it’s not a burden. It’s a burden if you make it a burden. You’ve got to believe. It only takes one person to believe so you can have success. I always believe in this team. I always believe in these players and so on and so on. That’s what it is for me. It’s not a burden.
“I understand what comes with being the quarterback of the Washington Redskins. I understand what comes with being a quarterback in the NFL. And yeah, it might be a little harder here because of certain aspects of what goes on around this team. I understand that.”
Asked to clarify what he meant by “around this team,” Griffin acknowledged the pressure that comes with playing for a team with a tradition of success in a major media market.
“Our fan base is great. They demand success. They got a taste of it last year and they’re going to want more of that and we’ve got to provide it and we will,” he said. “I think we will. So I think that those are some of the factors that go into it. It’s not a small town. It’s not a small-city team that doesn’t have a big media room like this. It’s part of it and I understand that.
“Even coming from a small town in high school and a medium-sized town in Waco in Texas, you come, you step up to another level, you’re in the big city, bright lights and you’ve got to perform, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The Redskins haven’t performed to date, and nothing about the process has looked smooth.
And there have been times this year when Griffin hasn’t appeared to be as thick-skinned as he might like to believe.