Robert Griffin III Is ESPN’s Next Big Star

The former quarterback is already a broadcasting dynamo. But he hasn’t quite given up on playing football yet.

It scanned as your typical team meeting the night before the big game. In a private banquet room of a posh Orlando hotel—out of earshot from various fans, in various states of sobriety, milling around in the lobby— the team members took their places, flanking a long oak table. As plates of uneaten appetizers started to get cold and congeal, men ranging in shape and size talked through formations and schemes and lineups. A laptop was configured to project film clips and visual elements against a wall. The room crackled with a mix of confidence and nervous energy.

Robert Griffin III was, unmistakably, the quarterback, the playmaker. His signature braids popping out from under a silk skullcap, he came clad in an RGIII signature logo sweatshirt and ballcap—relics of another time and, by accident or design, signifiers of his alpha status. A natural born leader, he held forth, speaking at just the right volume and cadence, eyes darting to each teammate around the table. He leavened earnest shop talk about Cover-2 packages with jokes and movie quotes and stories about everything from Alex Rodriguez mistreating a young fan, to the giddy anticipation of spending Halloween with his Estonian-born wife and their two young daughters.
Here it was, Oct. 28, the guts of a grueling, travel-heavy season. But Griffin betrayed no fatigue. And not simply because this was a rare home game, a chance to spend the night before a game in his own bed. “Honestly,” he said, as the meeting started to wrap, “I’m fresh. This is fun. I’m ready to go this very minute, if needed. And I could do two games in one day.”

Read Jon Wertheim’s full article here.