NFL Draft 2012: Why Donovan McNabb Is Wrong About RG3 with Redskins

Donovan McNabb thinks Robert Griffin III is going to go through exactly what he went through if he is drafted second overall by the Washington Redskins.

McNabb appeared on ESPN First Take Thursday morning, and he was asked point-blank if RG3 will be a good fit with the Redskins and head coach Mike Shanahan.

McNabb doesn't think so, and he went on and on about why he thinks RG3 is already doomed.

Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk was kind enough to put McNabb's quotes in print. McNabb's biggest gripe when it comes to Mike Shanahan and son Kyle Shanahan, Washington's offensive coordinator, is that the two of them are stubborn when it comes to changing their offensive system to take advantage of a quarterback's strengths:

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Here’s a guy coming out who’s very talented, mobile, strong arm, we’ve already heard he’s intelligent, football mind. Are you going to cater the offense around his talent, and what he’s able to do, or are you going to bring the Houston offense with Matt Schaub over to him and have him kind of be embedded in that?

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McNabb would later basically admit that he was never comfortable in the Redskins offense, saying he was "misused" when he was in Washington.

What McNabb is conveniently ignoring is the fact that there's a huge difference between asking a veteran quarterback who has spent many years in the same offense to change his ways and asking a rookie quarterback to change his ways. No rookie quarterback is going to come into the league and start running the exact same offense he ran at college. All rookie quarterbacks have a learning curve.

Assuming RG3 gets drafted by the Redskins, his learning curve will be adjusting to the offense presented to him by the Shanahans. It's going to be much easier for him to un-learn what he learned at Baylor than it was for McNabb to un-learn what he learned in his 11 seasons with Philadelphia.

McNabb tried to bolster his point by listing all the quarterbacks who have tried and failed under Shanahan since John Elway:

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We had John Beck, who was 0-4. Rex Grossman: 6-11. Jay Cutler, who was his prize possession: 17-20. Jake Plummer, a guy who had success, led them to the AFC Championship against Pittsburgh, as we know, and then benched him the next year, because he wouldn’t do what he wanted him to do. Brian Griese, who was supposed to be the heir apparent to John Elway, hasn’t had a lot of success.

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I give McNabb credit for having his facts straight, but he's ignoring a few things here too.

John Beck: a career backup and a bad quarterback.

Rex Grossman: should be a career backup, a bad quarterback.

Jay Cutler: impressive skill set but a mediocre quarterback.

Jake Plummer: out of football, a mediocre quarterback during his career.

Brian Griese: at best a game manager during his career.

As for McNabb himself, he was old and over the hill by the time Shanahan got him, and it was a bad fit from the start that only got worse as time went along.

Griffin is different. He's got the goods to be the No. 1 overall pick in any other draft, and he's also got the goods to be a potential superstar and a statistical wunderkind, not unlike Cam Newton before him.

The only guy anybody should be comparing RG3 to in this case is Cutler. He was, after all, drafted by Shanahan, whose goal was to turn him into Denver's franchise quarterback.

Let's give Shanahan this much credit: At the end of his third season with Cutler, his pet project had over 4,500 passing yards and 25 touchdown passes. He and Cutler were on the right track together, but Shanahan got the axe at the end of the 2008 season, and the experiment was over.

McNabb is of the mind that Shanahan will have to make a much more immediate splash with RG3, as surely Shanahan won't be able to keep his job if RG3 disappoints and the Redskins have another bad season under his watch.

He has a point about that, but the rest of us should recognize the reality that RG3 is talented and smart enough to make the most of his rookie season in Washington. If he does, he'll keep Shanahan's head off the chopping block, and the Redskins will be headed towards long-term success for the first time in years.

You get the sense that McNabb thinks RG3 will fail because he wants him to fail. And he wants him to fail, of course, because he wants his own failure in Washington to look like it was all Shanahan's fault.

So my advice, such as it is, is to just ignore McNabb when it comes to this subject.