The Washington Redskins embark upon their 2013 Season OTAs which began on May 23rd.
Here's how the team, and the quarterbacks, are fairing after the first session, as explained by the team's head coach, Mike Shanahan.
Will RG3 be ready?
Training camp will be open to the public at the team's newly built Bon Secours Washington Redskins Training Center at 2401 West Leigh Street.
Here's how the team, and the quarterbacks, are fairing after the first session, as explained by the team's head coach, Mike Shanahan.
On quarterback Robert Griffin III saying he wants to be ready for training camp:
“Well, we’re hoping that he’s ready for training camp. He’s been working extremely hard like we’ve talked about in the past. I think you guys could see today that he’s been throwing for a while. His arm is in pretty good shape. It looks like he’s making a lot of progress.”
On how closely he watches Griffin III:
“I’ll take a look at film each day, drills he’s going through and how he’s throwing the ball and exactly what he’s doing. You want to make sure that he doesn’t overdo it, and so that’s one of the reasons why you look at the film. But he’s in there getting a lot of treatment, in the weight room every day, doing the things that he needs to do. I think you could see today he’s been throwing the ball for a while. You can see his arm is feeling quite well. So it’s a process.”
On what he thought “ahead of schedule” means for Griffin III’s timetable for return:
“I don’t know. I really don’t know what ‘ahead of schedule’ means except for the doctors. They keep on saying that he’s ahead of schedule, and we want to be patient with him because if you go too quick and you set it back, he could hurt himself. And so our goal is to see where he’s at when he comes into camp July 25.”
On if Griffin III could play in the season opener without playing in the preseason:
“It’s hard to say. Probably not…. Do you mean in a preseason game or in practice? You’d have to practice against yourself, not necessarily against an opponent. One of the reasons for that, he’d have to work with the first-team offense and he’d have to have some practice time.”
On if he would have separate “Robert Rules” rules for participating in training camp if Griffin III is ready to play:
“You can’t have ‘Robert Rules.’ What you have to do if a guy is able to practice, he’s able to practice, because whatever you’re doing, you’re going to put your legs in certain situations that causes stress. We don’t want to put him in situation that he’s not ready for. So it’s an ongoing process. The doctors will evaluate him. They’ve looked at guys with ACLs for a long time. They’re the experts in that area. They’ll let me know if they think he’s ready to go.”
On his conversations with Griffin III this offseason:
“You kind of go through each game. When he came back, you talk about the Cleveland game even though he didn’t play in that game. You talk about the Philly game and you go through the plays as well as Dallas and Seattle. You kind of communicate, get to know each other better every practice, every year you’re together. He knows my personality; I know his. And you talk about the things you could have done differently, things that went poorly during the season, things that went well. But overall we had a great conversation.”
On if he paid attention to comments by Griffin III’s father:
“I read what he said and I could see his thought process. When he got hurt, on the sideline it was my reaction too when I saw it on the replay. When I went over to the doctors, I talked to the doctors, ‘Are you sure his knee is stable? Are you sure he can go back in the game?’ Because to me, there was some question marks when I did see it on the screen. And that’s part of the process. You get a lot of information. You talk to the doctors. I talked to Robert, and we talked about those conversations, but at the end of the day, you make a decision [and] you go with it. You get a lot of input from a lot of different people, but the bottom line is that’s over with and we’ve got a season to look forward to.”
On his relationship with Griffin III:
“Robert’s a very competitive guy. You want guys like Robert that’s going to go out there and give you everything he’s got. He wants to compete every time he’s on the football field. It doesn’t matter if it’s a run or a pass. I think Robert is the first person to tell you that, ‘Hey, this year, I’m going to be a little bit more conservative than I was a year ago.’ If you’re not on the field, you’re going to hurt our football team. And you have to take those dives. You have to throw the football away, regardless of if it’s a dropback pass or a scramble or if it’s a quarterback keep. There’s a lot of different scenarios that are involved in a football game, and I think each year you grow. Every quarterback that I’ve been [with] grows every year. What Robert was able to do last year doesn’t happen very often, that’s never happened before in the history of the National Football League for a guy to be as successful throwing the football and running the football like he did. So there’s a lot of pluses.”
On Griffin III’s concern that he’ll be pulled from games with minor injuries:
“Here’s what I do – I ask the doctors. I’m not an expert in that area. A doctor says, ‘Hey, he’s got a little sprained ankle. [if] he’s fine,’ then he plays.”
Will RG3 be ready?
“My knee feels great", said Griffin. I can do all the stuff on the field
without any hesitations and that’s the best part. It is all about the
confidence and if I work hard enough to get the confidence back, I can get back
out on the field. ”
The QB has two phases left in his rehab: explosive sprinting
and cutting.
Explains Griffin, "Those are the only two things left with my knee being about
four-and-a-half months out of surgery. I am a little bit ahead but the team is
doing a good job allowing me to do the things I can do at the moment.”
Kirk Cousins Comments
Backup QB Kirk Cousins made a few revealing comments on his position with the team. Take a read.
On his
mindset entering the season:
“My mindset last year was to be ready
to go and to have a mindset of preparing like I’m starting. If you start to let
the thought that I’m probably not going to start creep in then I think your
preparation starts to suffer. Whether it was last year or this year, regardless
of the injury, my mindset was to just be ready to go as if I was starting and
then react from there. I’ll never regret the preparation that I put in. I’ll
never regret that."
On
auditioning for the other 31 teams:
“Well, every game is filmed, so even if
coaches are coaching other games they’re going to be able to go back and watch
tape and see what I can do. That’s in God’s hands. Let’s see what the future
holds. I believe that he has me here in Washington, D.C. for a reason and I
think this is a great place to be right now. It may be the best thing that ever
happened to me to start my career in Washington, D.C. We’ll see what happens,
but obviously if I play well it opens up doors elsewhere. If I don’t play well,
it doesn’t.”
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The team will conduct two more off-season training activities before the start of training camp on July 25, in Richmond, VA. Training camp will be open to the public at the team's newly built Bon Secours Washington Redskins Training Center at 2401 West Leigh Street.
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