When Mike Shanahan took to the podium earlier today for his press conference, he had one message to send to all of those who have been wondering about the health concerns of playing Robert Griffin III too early after returning from a serious knee injury. The Redskins are going to do everything in their power to not rush him back to soon.
On how surprised he is with what he’s seeing from quarterback Robert Griffin III:
“The one thing I don’t want to do is I don’t want to see anything too quick. I mean we’re dealing with an ACL. That takes time. Mother Nature is going to take its course. The thing that you love about Robert is he’s working the muscles around it. He loves to work. He does everything we ask him to do and then some to get himself ready.”
“There’s a time frame and there’s Mother Nature that’s involved and that ligament takes time to heal, so we’ve got to make sure that he doesn’t go too quick, because we don’t want him to do anything too quickly because he could set it back. When you work as hard as he does and your muscles are strong around the ligament, sometimes guys have the tendency to go too quick and we’re going to try to make sure that he doesn’t.”
On if he consistently talks to RGIII about not rushing through rehab:
“Well, I think what players do, and anybody does, trainers, they tell you to look at the muscles and you see his quads and his hamstrings. You see him working out with weights, his flexibility, how hard he’s working. Everybody’s very optimistic and they say he’s ahead of schedule.”
“Human nature is you have to let a ligament heal. You cannot force that. It’s a time frame that you’ve got to make sure that you don’t push it too hard, and that’s all we’re saying. We want him to work as hard as he can. Do what you can with the muscles around the knee but don’t do anything too quick because we don’t want to set it back. We want it to heal first.”
On Griffin III’s injury and what collectively he and the staff would have done differently:
“I think it’s been talked about enough. What we’re going to do is make sure Robert’s 100 percent. I get a feel with people the more I’m around them. I think players get more of a feeling for me, but the one thing you want to make sure of is how somebody practices gives them an opportunity to play in the game. If somebody does, what you think, someone might get injured, it’s your gut to take somebody out. Sometimes it changes from year to year. I know mine does with different players.”
“Every situation is different and sometimes you make the right call. There are times you don’t, but at the end of the day you’re always hoping that you’ll learn from your mistakes, whatever they are. At the end of this year, when we go into next year, one thing we want to make sure of is Robert never plays if he’s not 100 percent, so if he does tell me something, I’m not going to believe him this year compared to last year…That was a joke. That was a joke, I think [said while laughing]. But anyway, we’ll have fun with that.”
On what he meant when he said Griffin III will “set a record” for coming back:
“I didn’t say that. You’ve got to quote me the whole saying. I said, ‘If hard work had anything to do with it’…That’s what I’m talking about with Robert. I said Robert works so hard that if hard work had anything to do with the recovery, he’d set a record. That’s the way he is.”
“But we’re dealing with ligaments, we’re dealing with tendons. You can’t rush that. But around his knee will be the strongest support group you’ll have, and if you have a guy that does that, works that hard, then he’s got a chance to do something special.”
For a full breakdown of the Shanahan press conference click HERE.
