Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III has so far been unable to recapture the magic of his rookie season, and there are some in the NFL that believe he never will.
Mike Sando of ESPN.com polled 35 executives and coaches from around the league and asked them to place each of the 32 projected starting quarterbacks into one of five tiers, with Tier 1 representing the cream of the crop and Tier 5 representing the very worst.
Griffin received an average rating of 3.91.
"Five, and there's no coming back," one offensive coach told Sando. "He is done. The reason is, the injury slowed his legs, and his ego will not allow him to hit rock bottom and actually grind his way back up the right way."
The coach wasn't alone in his thinking.
"To get better in this league, you have to have a degree of humility," a personnel director said. "Griffin sees himself like Peyton, in that light. When he looks in the mirror, he is seeing things that everybody else is not seeing. That is why I was surprised when they gave him the fifth-year (option) and said it was an easy decision."
Griffin did, however, receive one second-tier vote from a general manager.
"I know how hard it is for a quarterback to go into a system for the first time," he said. "I go back to Brett Favre. He was a 1, but he goes to the Jets and he was probably a 2 or a 3. Then he went to a familiar system in Minnesota and was a 1 again.
"With Griffin, I'm taking into account the new offense, the new personality at head coach, coming off an injury. He showed his rookie year that he could be a 1. He is a young guy. I'm going to give him the benefit because of that."