The fate of quarterback Robert Griffin III was on minds everywhere on Sunday afternoon as the Redskins took on the 49ers hours after reports indicated that coach Jay Gruden wouldn’t hesitate to pull the plug on the quarterback that the organization moved heaven and earth to get in 2012.
Neither Griffin nor anyone else involved in the Washington passing offense played well in a 17-13 loss, but Colt McCoy remained on the bench for the entire game. After the game, Gruden didn’t sugarcoat the performance and didn’t assign much blame, but did indicate that the offensive line’s inability to block pass rushers impacted both the game plan and the performance.
“He’s made strides ya know, but there’s a lot of other things that go into the passing game. We’ve got a rookie left tackle playing his first game with significant time on the road. So we didn’t air it out, wanted to try to get the running game going. We had positive field position and didn’t want to take any chances down the field. This wasn’t a good day in the passing game,” Gruden said, via the Washington Post. “No question, we had some opportunities. I’ll check out the film, I’m not going to lay any blame to anybody just offensively. We just didn’t play good enough on third downs. Obviously didn’t convert any, and left some plays out there.”
The Redskins ran the ball a lot with Alfred Morris on Sunday and Morris ran well, leaving Griffin to be pretty much a game manager when he wasn’t being sacked by a member of the 49ers. That’s not as bad as being benched, but it’s also not really what anyone envisioned Griffin looking like in his third season when he was in the playoffs as a rookie.