Robert Griffin III Believes Caleb Williams Should Pull An Eli Manning
I’ll be honest: I like listening to Robert Griffin III. I think he’s got some humor to him, he sounds educated, at times, about football as well. He had some comments today about the future number-one overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft that turned some heads. He believes that USC’s Caleb Williams should pull an Eli Manning from the 2004 NFL Draft and say he isn’t going to play in Chicago.
Full quote via awfulannouncing.com:
“After everything that has happened with Justin Fields, can Caleb Williams really look at that and say, ‘This is an organization that has my best interest in mind, they’re going to develop me into the player that I want to become’?” Griffin asked.
“Eli Manning had power in that 2004 draft. He let the Chargers know, ‘Don’t draft me, I don’t believe in the direction your organization is heading, and I don’t want to play there.’ He refused to play for them and even threatened to sit out the entire season if they drafted him,” Griffin said. “So the Chargers traded him to New York for Phillip Rivers, a third-round pick, and also a first and fifth-round pick in the 2005 draft. Eli ended up winning two Super Bowls with the Giants and had a great career.”
On the one hand, I can sort of understand this thought process. Chicago is a death pit for Quarterbacks. They’ve never had a 4,000-yard passer, nor have they had a 30-touchdown thrower. The franchise seems cursed. Plus, they have had very little luck with top QB selections in recent memory.
However, it’s no secret that Ryan Poles hated Justin Fields’ guts. He went out of his way to set up the next QB for success, while he left Fields with scraps as weapons and a high school JV-level offensive line to protect him. Williams is already walking into a WAY better situation than Fields ever had in Chicago.
Robert Griffin III went on to say that he should force a trade to the Washington Commanders, as he is from the DC area. But Chicago’s roster right now is way better than the situation in Washington, so I would want to play with the best-supporting cast. I don’t know that I could trust an idiot like Ryan Poles as my GM, but at least the team on the field is shaping up to be kind of nice.
