Robert Griffin III: Why the Skins' Offensive Scheme Is the Key to RG3's Season

Since Sunday at around 5 PM Eastern Time, every sports journalist and blogger has been singing the praises of Redskins’ rookie QB Robert Griffin III.  And they have good reason to, as RG3 threw for 320 yards, 2 TDs, and no—that’s right, no—picks, marking the first time in NFL history a QB has had over 300 yards combined with those other two aforementioned stats.

Griffin III led the Redskins to a surprising victory over a very good Saints team that was more dominant than the score would suggest.  RG3 brings hope for Skins’ fans this season, and perhaps 12-18 more.  He brings a much-needed QB presence for a team that hasn’t won or seen a Superbowl in 21 years, which many fans credit to the fact that the Skins have had 21 QBs—including Griffin III—since Superbowl champion Mark Rypien—not a terribly stable situation.

So RG3 is great, that’s absolutely true—his bootleg, avoid-a-tackle, and throw-on-the-run-to-Fred Davis-on-the-sideline play especially blew my mind.  However, although he makes the Redskins markedly better than we’ve seen in a long time, don’t already be convinced he’s the LeBron James of the NFL.  I give a lot of credit to Mike and Kyle Shanahan for RG3’s debut.  People are saying Griffin III was even better than expected and beyond his hype, but his coaches and playbook were even more so.

If you only look at the numbers, RG3 started out 8-8.  But that’s not the whole story.  Without a system and first drive with which he was immensely comfortable, he probably wouldn’t have been as successful and gotten into a great rhythm, and the game could have gone a lot differently.

RG3 was clearly nervous—as anyone in his situation would be—and almost missed two very short passes and was bailed out by his receivers.  During his time, Kyle Shanahan ran basically the same play on both sides of the field five-plus times in a row to let his rookie QB get settled.

Notice, also, that play RG3 was running.  It was an unusual formation, an adaptation of something called “The Pistol,” created in 2004 by Chris Ault of University of Nevada—and later adapted by, you guessed it, Baylor—where the QB lines up somewhere between under center and shotgun and the RB stands behind him.  In the Skins’ version, RG3 had one back behind and one to the side, as in shotgun.  This provided extra protection for Griffin III behind a Skins’ offensive line that isn’t known for being anything special.  This provided the easiest scenario for Griffin III to succeed.

Lastly, “The Pistol” was not the only scheme that the Shanahan’s took from Baylor.  We heard from Chris Cooley in August that the Skins adapted a lot of their plays—including read options and naked bootlegs.  Last year, RG3 lead Baylor to the 4^th best passing game in the country.  Granted the NFL is a different beast, but the Shanahans clearly strategized and adapted from another system for RG3’s debut.

I’m not saying RG3 doesn’t deserve the hype and praise—he does.  I have no doubt that he’ll be a star.  But give the Shanahans some credit for creating a situation where he had the absolute best chance to get his feet wet and succeed. 

I’m also not saying the Skins’ coaching staff’s goal was to baby RG3.  Obviously their goal was to win.  But clearly they devised the perfect combination of introducing RG3 to the NFL and strategizing against the Saints to get the best of both worlds.  It takes guts from Kyle Shanahan to run the same play over and over again in a completely new offensive scheme, but it worked. 

RG3 deserves a lot of credit.  He made almost no mistakes and looked more like a veteran than a rookie.  But it’s not just him that’s responsible for the Redskins success.  It’s the synergy of RG3 and the scheme developed by the coaches.  Griffin III makes the Skins a real contender, but the Shanahans further molded RG3 into the NFL QB we saw in Week 1.