Success in the NFL as a player is usually predicated on how talented or hard-working you are. Others times, the organization that drafts you can also play a huge role in how a career turns out.
Organizations with dysfunctional culture can chew player after player up, taking a guy who was once special and leaving him a shell of himself.
LaVar Arrington believes the Redskins have ruined Robert Griffin III, so much so that he believes a change of profession is his only shot at success.
“A different profession, probably,” he said. “For me, I look at it like this: Once you’ve damaged somebody the way he’s damaged right now, I just think that it will be a long shot for him to turn out to be what he was and what people expected and anticipated him to be. When he was drafted, his rookie year, they ran a lot of Wildcat and that read-option did very well. And if you notice, it’s not just Robert Griffin III that’s struggling. It’s guys like [Colin] Kaepernick as well.
"The guys that ran that Wildcat-style offense are now struggling. When you break down Robert’s film, it’s just very simple to see the things that are really, really not good, and the things that make you wonder, for me, how is he being coached? Here’s the thing: You have to have done enough homework before you drafted the guy. Now, I know they’ve got [offensive coordinator Sean] McVay and they brought in [Jay] Gruden to fix him, so you have a different group of guys, but I go back and I say, okay, you bring him in and then you draft Kirk Cousins in the same draft. The handwriting’s on the wall right there.”
Arrington said some of the blame for Griffin’s failings fall on the coaching staff.
By Glenn Erby
