Sirius Radio Dicussion Today RE: RGIII, Russell Wilson, Read Option, Et. Al.
Was listening to the Morning Kickoff with Ross Tucker, and the Opening Drive with Bob Papa and LaDainian Tomlinson this morning on Sirius Radio Channel 88 and they made some interesting comments.
I will paraphrase as follows: Ross Tucker said he believes the Read Option Offense can work in the NFL without getting your QB seriously injured, if it is limited to five running plays by the QB maximum per game. He also said the QB needs to become an expert in protecting themselves by knowing when and how to slide. He said Russell Wilson is the best he has seen at doing this. He said (direct quote) "Russell Wilson is a smart cookie and already knows how to protect himself expertly by knowing when and how to slide. Ross went on to say he believes that because Wilson played a lot of baseball it was easy for him to incorporate that type of slide into his running. He said that RGIII has not mastered this so far and that some running QB's like Michael Vick have never mastered it. Ross said that Cam Newton has not mastered it yet either, but so far has been lucky in not getting hurt, partially do to his size. However, he cautioned than Newton needed to learn how to protect himself better as well, as he pointed out the Haloti Ngata hit on RGIII would have caused similar injury to Newton and his size would not have helped him on that play.
On the Opening Drive, Papa and Tomlinson had a discussion where the severity of RGIII's injury (both a torn LCL and ACL) on the same previously injured knee would be a huge setback to him and the Redskins next year. Tomlinson said that the Redskins would likely now have to abandon the Read Option to protect their franchise QB from further injury and implement the same offense Shanhan used with Elway. He said he believed RGIII could master this offense but it will take him additional time, practice and a lot of reps to do so. Papa said the second year for an new QB is important to develop and pickup reps early anyway during the off season, which now RGIII will be unable to do. He said this was a huge blow to the Redskins hope for another playoff season next year.
I thought these comments were very interesting. Next year looks bleak for the Redskins and their fans, unless Kirk Cousins can step in and excel. Too bad, but I fault Shanahan for this. It is almost like he drafted Cousins because he knew the high risk associated with the type of game RGIII has, and was willing to risk it all with Cousins as a plan B, if RGIII got hurt. If so, that is just a sorry state of affairs for that organization.
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Originally Posted by PEZ
