In his first attempt to bring his team back in the waning moments of an NFL game, Washington’s Robert Griffin III had more than the Tampa Bay Bucaneers’ defense to contend with: He was playing on the road, so the crowd was a factor. And then, all of a sudden, the headset in his helmet to communicate with the coaching staff went dead.
Not good.
And not surprising to the Redskins’ Santana Moss.
“Happens every time,” Moss said. “No lie. I’ve been in the league 12 years, I’ve been in plenty of games, and the home team goes, ‘Oh well.’ ” Then he mimicked yanking an imaginary plug out of a wall.
Whatever the reason for the technical difficulty, Griffin had to take Moss and the Redskins all the way down the field, and do so with only the single play he ran onto the field with after a touchback stopped the clock with 1:42 to play and the Redskins down 22-21.
And he did. Griffin, using arm and legs, methodically moved the Redskins down the field for the game-winning field goal by Billy Cundiff as time expired.
Before Tampa Bay’s Connor Barth kicked a field goal to put his team up late in a second half in which the Redskins had scored zero points, backup Rex Grossman turned to Griffin on the Washington sideline and said, “You want them to make this so you can lead the team down the field and win.” Griffin laughed and said, “Yeah, I also want him to miss this field goal.”
Above all, Grossman’s position shows just how much the Redskins think of RG III.
“Every week,” Grossman said after the game, “the way he handles himself. The way he translates what he learns – it’s extremely impressive. As a whole, that’s the most impressive thing to me. Not the plays he makes, but the total sum of what he’s been doing. It’s the whole [expletive] thing.”
