Either way I had RG3 with the same grade I gave Russell Wilson, which was a 2nd round pick. I felt a lot more positive about Wilson as opposed to RG3. But part of that was because Wilson was an underdog and I am partial to underdogs, whereas Griffin was overrated and I tend to argue a lot against guys I feel are overrated.
Wilson to me was the ultimate boom or bust guy, and I couldn't rate him higher than a 2nd rounder because I wouldn't have ever wanted him to be THE plan...as in we're taking this guy and giving him three full years to see what he has, and we will ride or die with him. I don't believe in affording that to 1st round pick QBs either, to be honest. But with Wilson I would've wanted to be sure I acquired a competitor, and I thought the Seahawks were very smart in making sure they did exactly that with Matt Flynn. Regardless of how valuable Flynn ended up being or not being, that was a great allocation call, acquiring those two in conjunction with one another.
Getting back to Wilson as a boom or bust guy, it was simple. As a football player at Wisconsin and even prior to that at NC State (although a little less consistent) he was magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. But the height thing was there. You saw how he managed his own height deficiencies on tape, there were discrete ways in which he accounted for it. Either history was right and this 5'10" quarterback was just too damned short to get away with that in the pros...or this guy was going to be terrific. Others saw an in-between, they thought he's going to be a great backup, or maybe be like a Troy Smith, or something like that. I didn't see that. The height was going to matter, or it wasn't.
That's one of the reasons I was so quick to proclaim that he was on the fast path to being a truly elite quarterback as early as his rookie season. He was doing well all year but how he did in the playoffs sealed it. If you are like me and you believed either this guy's height mattered or it didn't matter, then in that year you found out it didn't, and he's as wonderful as you imagined he could be if the height didn't matter.
The dichotomous nature of his prospective NFL career path is what scared me into saying he should be a 2nd round pick because I can't live with making him a Plan A. Maybe I should've been bold enough to make him a 1st round pick...but I'm still not convinced of that. I still think it may have been reckless to do that.
And in a way, RG3 was a lot like that. Not the guy whose basket I'd want to put every single one of my eggs, but potentially brilliant.