Quarterback Robert Griffin III recently sat down with Washington D.C.’s WJLA for an exclusive interview as the team wrapped up their open-to-the-public portion of training camp. And by Monday, Griffin’s comments had spread far and wide. This young man, the one with the stellar rookie season and less-than-stellar performances in 2013 and 2014 really had the audacity to call himself “the best quarterback in the league.”
That is, if context isn’t your strong suit.
It’s true that Griffin has, for reasons both under his control and not, been a lightning rod for controversy. Every statement he makes is picked apart. There is an overarching negative narrative surrounding Griffin. From the preferential treatment that Griffin had gotten from Washington team owner Dan Snyder that soured former head coach Mike Shanahan against them both, the knee and ankle injuries that have stymied Griffin’s development, to former Washington tight end Chris Cooley slamming Griffin’s ability to lead an offense last year and candidly negative comments made publicly by his current head coach, Jay Gruden, the past few years have been unkind to Griffin. Even now, NFL powers-that-be are declaring Griffin “done,” unless he can rein in his ego and find ways to rebuild his fundamentals.
That’s why the reaction to Griffin’s comments were so pointedly astonished. How could this player, who may never again reach the heights he did as a rookie, really believe he’s the best quarterback in the league? The answer is simple: Read the entire comment. The “best in the league” notion is couched in a much longer answer he gave to WJLA. It reads:
“I don’t feel like I have to come out here and show anybody anything or why I’m better than this guy or better than that guy. It’s more about going out and affirming that for me, I go out and I play, I know I’m the best quarterback on this team. I feel like I’m the best quarterback in the league and I have to go out and show that. Any athlete at any level, if they concede to someone else, they’re not a top competitor, they’re not trying to be the best that they can be. There’s guys in this league that have done way more than me. But, I still view myself as the best because that’s what I work toward every single day.”
In short, Griffin believes he’s the best quarterback in the league in the same way every quarterback—nay, every player—in the NFL should think that about himself. Without that confidence, that level of self-belief, what is the point? If you don’t think you are or can be the best, what use is it to make a career out of being a professional competitor? This is a common mentality in the NFL, and in professional sports in general. Griffin is not speaking out of turn, here, or saying that he’s better than Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. What he’s saying is that he has the fire in him to be the best and anything less than the best is not an acceptable goal to hold.
But because of Griffin’s history and the way that his career has played out in the public eye, it’s far more easy to condemn him for alleged hubris than actually seeing him as a very self-aware athlete who is saying nothing wrong. In fact, Griffin went on to say incredibly nuanced things about not just being in the NFL, but being in the NFL under the circumstances he faced over the past three seasons. He continued:
“It’s not the game you thought it was when you were a kid dreaming of playing as a professional athlete. There’s more business that goes into it. There’s more ruthlessness. More backstabbing than you would expect. But at the end of the day, when you put your helmet on, your shoulder pads, your pants, and your cleats and you get to go out there and run around on the field, it’s still the same game you played as a kid. When I look at it that way, ‘I’m like man it’s an honor.’”
If anyone else in the league were to say these things, he’d most likely be praised for his honesty, his candor. But because it is Griffin, and because he is viewed in a very particular light, everything else in the interview is wiped away in favor of advancing the narrative that Griffin is a delusional ego-case who honestly believes there is no better quarterback in the league. But it’s wrong for that to be the takeaway here, it’s wrong to cherry-pick Griffin’s words to serve what truly seem like nefarious purposes. And it’s simply not fair to Griffin.
No, Griffin is not the best quarterback in the NFL. And it doesn’t matter anyway—that’s not the point he was trying to make. Next time, let’s prize context over sensationalism, or at least allow Griffin’s words—all of them—to speak for themselves.