Robert Griffin III, now a Pro Bowl quarterback, has thrived during the Redskins’ six-game winning streak.
Part of the reason: the way he handles pressure situations. His passer rating has been above 101.9 in the five games he started during this stretch.
Q: What are your thoughts on playing Dallas? Do you have a sense of what it means to fans here?
A: “For guys like myself, Alfred (Morris), Kai (Forbath), the other rookies, we’re fresh into this rivalry. But we can definitely sense how the fans feel, how some of the guys that have been here for many years feel about the Cowboys, and that’s the mindset we have to take on because we’re not just doing it for ourselves, we’re doing it for them. We’re doing it for the fans. I know the fans will make sure that the stadium is electric. It’s really exciting and we’ll definitely have a home field advantage.”
Q: How do you handle pressure situations?
A: “Whatever you do -- in basketball, a big game, in track, the finals, whatever it is -- whenever you play the moment up too much, it can become too big to seize the moment. You just want to make sure you don’t make something so big that you can’t grab a hold of it. So I think a lot of guys are not necessarily downplaying the game, but are not going to talk themselves up like this is the most important game of our lives. We’ve just got to go out and win a football game. That’s what they pay us to do and that’s why we play.”
Q: What makes this offense difficult to defend?
A: “We have so many multiple things we can do out of the same sets, out of the same formations, just changing, trying to confuse the defense. You know, changing splits, all that kind of stuff makes defenses have to prepare for more things. They don’t have enough time within a week to prepare for all of that, so we’re going to get our plays and we have to make sure when we get those moments that we go out and execute the play, because they’ll have something drawn up that’ll be the perfect stopper for a play that we have. It’s not going to be that way every time. You’ve just got to make sure you get them more than they get you.”
Q: After the Carolina game, you said you thought the team was going to make the playoffs. Did you believe that or were you just saying that?
A: “It’s self-talk. You want to talk yourself up, but you don’t say something you don’t believe in. Going on the (bye week) break, I told everybody I was able to clear my head and just know that you don’t have to freak out in a situation like that. As long as everyone takes the right mindset every game the rest of the season, we can win them all. We’ve done that to this point. We expect to go finish it. I think that’s just the biggest difference for the team all together is the mindset they’re taking to practice, taking that into the games. We’ve had a lot of guys grow up throughout the course of the season.”
Q: Was there a moment during the six-game winning streak when you realized this was possible:
A: “No, because after the first game after we won it, I just felt a different attitude from the team and it’s paid off.”
Q: How is your knee?
A: “The knee is fine. Whatever I feel like I can do on that day, I will. I’ll be able to do more. ... I won’t dodge it. I’ll be able to do more against the Cowboys than against Philly, but we’ll see how that goes.”
Q: Was there anything you felt you couldn’t do last week because of your knee?
A: “Nothing. We won the game. Limited turnovers. We made the big plays when we had to, and our defense stepped up big there for us at the end. It was a total team win. The way I look at it, I was able to go out and do what I needed to do to help the team win and not be a liability, so it was a success.”
Q: What was your message to the team about this game?
A: “I told the guys not to play this up so big that you can’t seize it. ... You’ve got to make it to where you approach it the same exact way you have the past six weeks and know that it’s for all the marbles, whatever you want to say, but don’t go out and play scared. You have to play like you have nothing to lose, which is what we’ve done the past six weeks and we’re going to continue to do that.”
Q: Do you think quarterbacks are defined by how they play in games like the one this Sunday:
A: “I think it can be that way. Nothing definite in the league with how you’re going to be judged, but if you play big on a big stage, people tend to write good things about you. We all want to play well on the big stage or in a prime time game or in a game like this that comes down to the division. It’s like a conference championship game in college, but it just happened to play out this way that the last game of the year is a championship game and we have to win this championship.”
John Keim covers the Redskins for the Washington Examiner. Follow him on Twitter @CBSRedskins or @John_Keim.
