Former Washington head coach Mike Shanahan believes Redskins owner Dan Snyder constantly interfered with former quarterback Robert Griffin III, to the point where Shanahan felt undermined.
In a feature by Jason Reid of the Undefeated, Shanahan said in a team meeting, Griffin told the coaching staff he wasn’t going to use some of the playbook, as he wanted to become less mobile and more of a pocket passer. Shanahan said Griffin sounded a lot like he’d been talking with Snyder about how he should play.
“When Robert is standing there going through all of that, I know it’s coming from Dan,” Shanahan said. “When Robert talked about ‘unacceptable,’ that was a word Dan used all the time. He was using phrases Dan used all the time. There’s only one way a guy who’s going into his second year would do something like this: If he sat down with the owner and the owner believed that this is the way he should be used. He had to have the full support of the owner and, in my opinion, the general manager to even have a conversation like that. He just had the best year for a rookie QB in the history of the game. You got selected to the Pro Bowl. We went to the playoffs.”
One of the widespread criticisms of Griffin was that he seemed to play without taking risks. Shanahan said he tried to get his former QB to slide and throw balls away, but he was continually stunned by how he would safeguard himself. Shanahan suspects the attitude didn’t just come from injury issues, but from Snyder himself.
“I said to Dan, ‘Do you realize what you’re doing to this kid?’”
Since Shanahan was fired by Washington, Griffin was relegated to backup, not appearing in a single game in 2015. He signed with the Cleveland Browns to become the number one starter. Given all that’s transpired, it’s probably a good thing for everyone involved that they got out. Dan Snyder is football’s worst owner.
Dan Snyder is without a doubt football’s worst owner.
