thanks, great article, very balanced in the midst of a maelstrom of one-sided takes.
one of the best i've read this year, period.
few excerpts...
"There's one area of Griffin's game that truly concerns me, though. And if we believe Mike Shanahan, it was also his biggest worry: Griffin takes too many hits. More accurately, he takes too many
big hits. Even more accurately, Griffin, more than any other player I've seen, seems preternaturally gifted at taking the biggest hit imaginable in almost every circumstance. It sounds like hyperbole, but in nearly every game there are three, four, five, and sometimes six or more times that Griffin goes flying as though some Wile E. Coyote explosive detonated in his face."
"There are
many,
many,
many,
many examples of Griffin getting lit up, either resulting in injury or coming dangerously close. For Griffin, it's partly about the read option, but not entirely. Eagles head coach Chip Kelly has a mnemonic for quarterbacks when they run the ball: "touchdown, first down, get down." The idea is that the quarterback takes what the defense gives him — but absolutely no more.
"If [the quarterback has] open grass and there's nobody in front of you, hopefully you'll run all the way," Kelly
explained this summer. "If you can go 60 yards and run it in, God bless you. We're not telling them to hook slide. We're just telling them that when contact is imminent, our guys are not 250-pound bowling balls. They're going to run you over."
"It sounds harsh — and a little ridiculous — to say Griffin can improve as a quarterback by not running into walls or allowing himself to be tossed around like a rag doll when he's trying to throw blocks on reverses, but it's true. Hits like these have a cumulative effect that will diminish Griffin's ability to play quarterback. As Kelly noted, quarterbacks "have to understand the best ability is durability. They have to go out and play the next snap."
yet he is ultimately optimistic, and explains why.