His first year in the NFL coincided with the final season played by Randy Moss. With Moss voluntarily giving up his duties as part of ESPN’s Monday night pregame show, Robert Griffin III will be taking the Hall of Famer’s place.
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reports that Griffin will fill the Moss spot on the weekly Monday night production, which usually originates from the site of the game.
Griffin joined ESPN last year, after his NFL career ended. However, Griffin has said he’s ready for his NFL career to resume, at any moment.
He needs to rethink that one as his broadcasting career flourishes. Once a former player gives up one of those prime spots, it could take a while for one of those prime spots to open up again.
Griffin, earlier this year, rethought his decision to publish a book about his time in Washington. In confirming the decision to pull the plug on the project, Griffin said (in part), “In time and through a more meaningful method, I hope to address my first-hand experience.”
It’s hard to think of many more meaningful methods than downloading the information into a long-form written narrative. Although his agent, Mark Lepselter, told PFT at the time that the Commanders, owner Daniel Snyder, the NFL, and/or by ESPN did not pressure Griffin to drop the book project, someone apparently explained to Griffin that something so inflammatory may not be in the best interests of a promising broadcasting career.
Regardless, something caused Griffin to back away from what he called “an explosive tell-all” about “the shocking mismanagement and toxic culture within the most dysfunctional professional football team in America.” He suggested that he was a witness to sexual harassment within the team. When questions emerged as to why he’d defer such relevant and timely information that could assist the current efforts of others to a book to be released months later, he created the vague impression that he was a victim — and never opted to clarify the situation.
“I’m gonna open your eyes to the sexual harassment that permeated the walls of that building,” Griffin said in the since-deleted Twitter video announcing the book. His co-author, Gary Myers, said Griffin “heard things, didn’t witness” sexual harassment.
When the Commanders face the Eagles on Monday, November 14, that could be a very meaningful method for Griffin to open our eyes to the sexual harassment that permeated the walls of that building. As meaningful methods go, they don’t get much more meaningful than the two-hour pregame show preceding a Washington game on Monday Night Football.