He didn’t apologize or say he was wrong, but he indeed express regret for the things he said after his team lost to the Eagles.
“I think at the end of the day, I just have to know in that situation after a tough loss to a divisional opponent I can’t give anybody any opportunity to read into my words and misinterpret anything,” Robert Griffin III told reporters on Wednesday, via comments distributed by the team. “Some of the things I said -- I was trying to give a good compliment to Philly. I wasn’t trying to take any shots at anybody and it turned out that way. You’re asking me today and like I said, if I could take any of that back, yeah, I would take it back, because in the heat of that moment, you’re frustrated. You’re trying to figure out why things didn’t work. I’m trying to give you guys honest answers and it hurt us in that sense. That’s on me. I’ve just got to take more time to think about things and just not, even when I’m trying to give an honest answer, sometimes, ‘Let me look at the film’ is good enough, because you can look at the film and figure it out.”
Regardless of Griffin’s intent, he did indeed take a shot at his coaches and at his receivers, claiming that the Eagles knew what was coming and that, on the last play from scrimmage, the receivers didn’t get open. And he’s now indeed trying to take it back, apparently by pretending he never said it.
“You guys asked me about the last play of the game,” Griffin explained. “I said I tried to throw the ball away and it didn’t work. I don’t know who else is to blame for that. I tried to throw the ball away and it didn’t work. So like I said, you just can’t let those little things – ‘I’, ‘me,’ people trying to coach you in those areas – take advantage of or just turn what you’re trying to say. But at the end of the day, like I said, I talked to London [Fletcher] and those guys and they knew what I was trying to say. Maybe I can say ‘I’, ‘me’ a whole lot more, but other people can take that the wrong way, too.”
Some would say that Grffin should have apologized publicly, and that his failure to utter those words reflects the same pride and ego that caused him to shift blame in the first place.
Based on a report from Chick Hernandez of CSN Washington, the blame definitely belongs with Griffin. Hernandez reports that Griffin “called the wrong protection” on the final play from scrimmage, and that Griffin’s reference to no one getting open “rubbed teammates the wrong way.”
It remains to be seen whether Griffin’s effort to put the toothpaste back in the tube will make a difference to those teammates. Some of them may see it as sincere and genuine, others may see it as expedient and hollow.
For now, it appears the situation is under control. With another game coming and the team still alive in NFC Least, it has to be. If the losses continue, that could change.