Washington Redskins head coach Jay Gruden named quarterback Robert Griffin III the team's starter for next season, but he did so while adding a fairly major, if seemingly innocuous, caveat.
"He's got the starting job right now," Gruden said of Griffin while at the NFL owners meetings in Phoenix last week, per Rich Tandler of CSN Washington. "Hopefully he takes it and runs with it."
Right now.
By using those specific words, Gruden potentially made it clear that while Griffin has the inside track and will be given every opportunity to again live up to his lofty draft status, he won't be given carte blanche should his initial offerings come up short.
As Michael David Smith of ProFootballTalk notes, Gruden has shown a willingness to move onto the next member of the depth chart should he fail to see the results he wants and hinted in the past that Griffin may not embody his ideal quarterback.
"There's also the simple fact that both Colt McCoy and Kirk Cousins were better than Griffin last year, the first year in Gruden's offense for all three of them," Smith writes. "Griffin takes so many sacks (33, more than McCoy and Cousins combined) and fumbles so often (nine times, again more than McCoy and Cousins combined) that he negates the advantage that his running ability provides. It's great for a quarterback to be able to make plays with his feet, but not great for him to trust his feet to bail him out of so many situations that he doesn't get rid of the ball when he's under pressure and ends up taking sacks or fumbling."
Indeed, there were times last season when Griffin looked incapable of reading a simple defensive alignment and getting the ball out with any semblance of speed or accuracy.
Redskins personnel executive and former quarterback Doug Williams reiterated Gruden's message in relation to Griffin while appearing as a guest on The End Zone show on SiriusXM NFL Radio.
"Talking to Jay and talking to everybody involved, I think it's adamant that Jay has done what he thought was right - naming him the starting quarterback - but at the same time Jay also says, 'We hope that he can improve,'" Williams said, per Chase Hughes of CSN Washington. "And this is a young guy that's got some talent. There's an adjustment that he has to make, and I think, given time, that's one of the reasons why nobody has given up on him - the fact that with the talent that he does have you're hoping that the last couple of years with the injuries and everything is out of the way, that he will develop into the guy that we all hope for him to be. And I think it's fair to give him that opportunity."
The company line coming out of D.C. seems to be that Griffin is the guy - for now. He'll be given ample opportunity to stake claim to the starting gig and if he takes it and makes it his own, all the better.
At the same time, those consistent rumors of the Redskins having some level of interest in quarterback Marcus Mariota in the 2015 NFL Draft just won't seem to die despite the fact that Mariota comes from the same read-option type of college offense as Griffin and Gruden is a proponent of a West Coast, rhythm-passing attack.
There's also the presence of new GM Scot McLoughlan to consider. Does he believe Griffin can be salvaged? Is Dan Snyder finally allowing the football men he hired to make autonomous decisions, unencumbered by his gentle interference?
Whatever direction the Redskins and Gruden wind up going with Griffin and the fifth selection in the first-round of April's draft, it will make for fantastic viewing in Washington leading up to next season.
So, get your popcorn ready, Redskins fans. It may be one heck of a bumpy ride.
