Garcia Media Life

Clearly, the kid only has one speed and it’s no longer fun to watch.  Without an offensive line to protect him, a defense that defends and a play-caller who is sane enough to know you run when you have a lead, Robert Griffin III is taking the entire team on his shoulders and taking a physical beating.   It’s not his re-built knee that’s in danger – it’s his brain and his very life.

We now know those impressive hits we see in the NFL cause permanent harm.   Former Cowboys running back, Tony Dorsett, is but the latest in a long line of players who have suffered permanent brain injury from the thousands of hits they‘ve absorbed through their college and NFL careers.  Every time RGIII incurs a brutal blow, as he did at least a dozen times in the most recent Redskins’ debacle against the Minnesota Vikings, his brain is literally crashing against his skull and creating the scar tissue that eventually causes memory loss, suicidal thoughts and severe depression.

Someday, when he’s no longer a kid and turns, say 50, will he be able to walk?  Will he remember to take his kids to school?  Will he shoot himself in the chest like Junior Seau did, in order to preserve his brain for clinical study?

I know this sounds sick and extreme.  But it is the reality for NFL players.  It’s why watching this sport is getting to be increasingly uncomfortable.  It’s why I feel very little joy and actually a great deal of sadness when I see this poor kid playing his heart out for a team that cannot protect him and a coaching staff and owner that could care less if they literally break him again and again, only to leave him to recover enough in the off-season to take next year’s beatings.

As you look back at it and understand the frighteningly consistent dysfunction of Daniel Snyder’s Washington Redskins for well over a decade, it makes you wish someone had told this intelligent, charming and supremely talented young man to RUN-  far, far away from Landover and the clutches of the Snyders and the Shanahans.   They’re not only using you, RG- they may very well be killing you.