Washington Redskins coach Jay Gruden griped about his comments about quarterback Robert Griffin III always drawing increased scrutiny of their relationship.
"No matter what I say about Robert, it's going to get twisted one way or the other," Gruden said. "If I say he is doing great, it's going to be I am too easy on him. If I say he needs to work harder, it means I said he's lazy. If I said he needs to work on his fundamentals, it means I don't like him."
Griffin III is starting Saturday against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Gruden is typically blunt about Griffin III.
"Robert had some fundamental flaws," Gruden said in November. "His footwork was below average. He took three-step drops when he should have taken five. He took a one-step drop when he should have taken three, on a couple occasions, and that can't happen. He stepped up when he didn't have to step up and stepped into pressure. He read the wrong side of the field a couple times. So from his basic performance, just critiquing Robert, it was not even close to being good enough to what we expect from the quarterback position."
Now, Gruden is choosing his words more carefully about Griffin III.
"I've got a ton of respect for Robert, man, and for what he goes through at the quarterback position, what he has already accomplished as a young quarterback and what he is going to accomplish in the future," Gruden said. "How we coach them in here is how we coach him, but we can't let the outside world affect what we do in here. And the whole idea of coach/player relationship is to get better every day and work on our game, work on what I do, work on what I can do to make him better and that's the bottom line. That's all we can do, that's all we want to do."
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Aaron Wilson covers the Ravens for The Baltimore Sun