When ESPN reported on Sunday that Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III had problems in the locker room, several reporters who cover the team regularly said an important detail was wrong: Although teammates were yelling while Griffin was trying to conduct interviews, those players were protesting the team’s policy of increasing access for reporters in the locker room, not protesting the media attention on Griffin individually.
ESPN stood by its report even as coach Jay Gruden called it “amateurish.” Now one of the reporters who is in Washington’s locker room regularly has written that even if that particular detail wasn’t exactly right, there are real internal problems with the team.
Jason Reid of the Washington Post writes that some players are privately expressing concerns about the lack of focus among players on the team, and that lack of focus is a particular problem among veteran starters -- exactly the players you’d hope would be the team leaders.
Of course, when there’s a leadership void in the locker room, everyone naturally looks to the starting quarterback. But, Reid writes, “Griffin seems to lack the personality to set the tone with his words, and he certainly hasn’t done it with his play in a long time.”
Griffin becoming a leader with his play is what this really boils down to. While he was in the midst of one of the best rookie seasons in NFL history, Griffin looked like he could be the leader of this franchise for a decade or more to come. Now Griffin looks like a mediocre, injury-prone quarterback, and Washington looks like what it is -- a last-place team. If Griffin can take the team on his back and start taking over games like he did in 2012, a lot of the problems in the locker room will go away. That’s what winning does.