The pundits on the Washington Redskins' postgame show disagreed with Mike Shanahan's decision to continue playing Robert Griffin III - not just for health reasons, but also because it hurt his team in a season-ending 24-14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
Everybody has heard the story of Griffin's injury at this point: the rookie quarterback was hurt on a rollout in the first quarter, but continued to play, even as an offense that scored touchdowns on its first two drives stagnated, failing to score any points for the rest of the game. Then, with the team down 21-14, Griffin went down for good, his knee buckling as he tried to retrieve the football. Many criticized Shanahan for leaving Griffin in, including former Redskin Brian Mitchell on Comcast SportsNet's dissection of the loss, as transcribed by Dan Steinberg:
"That was a guy who was obviously injured, ok?" Brian Mitchell said on Comcast SportsNet’s post-game live, while footage of RGIII hobbling out of bounds played over his voice. "I played quarterback. And I think I was a damn good athlete. If I was limping like that, I’m not — I am NOT – anywhere close to being 75 percent. And I think at that point, he should have been out of the game….Those type of guys, you’ve got to help protect them. And I think Robert should have been protected today from himself."
Doc Walker and Trevor Matich also had critical words for Shanahan's decision from a strategy perspective - not to mention that the decision to play Griffin may have caused further injury, which could hurt his career later.
Kirk Cousins didn't look significantly better than Griffin after he came into the game, completing only three of ten attempts, but he was playing in obvious passing situations after the team was forced to come from behind, and had performed well in wins while Griffin was out with a similar injury a few weeks earlier.