News Notes and Quotes from Inside the NFL

NEW YORK (January 9, 2013) – James Brown, Phil Simms and Cris Collinsworth are joined by NBC Sports’ Michelle Beadle on this week’s episode of INSIDE THE NFL.  The episode premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on SHOWTIME.

In the episode, Washington Redskins offensive tackle Trent Williams can be heard checking in with quarterback Robert Griffin III on the status of his knee prior to RGIII’s departure from Sunday’s playoff game. Griffin can be heard admitting his knee was “tweaked” and telling Williams, “It scared the (expletive) out of me.”

Also on tonight’s program, the guys discuss their thoughts on the protocol of pushing a player to perform through injury and where to draw the line.  Plus, they preview the upcoming AFC and NFC divisional playoffs and give their predictions on who they think will win.

INSIDE THE NFL, now in its 34^th season, airs every Wednesday night through the NFL season on SHOWTIME, with multiple replays each week on SHOWTIME and SHOWTIME EXTREME^® and availability on SHOWTIME On Demand.

INSIDE THE NFL is produced by CBS Sports and NFL Films. The executive producers are Sean McManus, Chairman, CBS Sports; and NFL Films.  Pete Radovich Jr., the Emmy Award-winning Creative Director for CBS Sports, serves as coordinating producer.

Following are excerpts from this week’s episode:

Trent Williams and Robert Griffin III audio…

WILLIAMS: You sure you’re alright, bro?

GRIFFIN: Yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be safe.

WILLIAMS: You tweak it? You tweak it when you were trying to back up?

GRIFFIN: Yeah. I’m saying that my foot kind of went (makes shaky hand gesture).

WILLIAMS: That kind of shocked you a little bit?

GRIFFIN: Little bit. It scared the (expletive) out of me.

WILLIAMS: Be smart.

GRIFFIN: I will.  Promise, promise.

On the protocols currently set in place to protect the players’ safety…
COLLINSWORTH: It’s a tough one.  I was watching the game. The question comes up on a lot of different levels.  Here’s a franchise quarterback that is the face of the NFL in many ways right now.  His jerseys are selling at record pace.  So you know the Redskins certainly do not want to see this young man ever get hurt.  But, I think the system has to be examined.  We’re talking about now players, as a league, players are trained, we are trained to play.  We saw what happened with Jay Cutler when he took himself or the doctors took him out of the game or whatever it was.  There was outrage.  ‘He’s not competitive.  He doesn’t care.’  All those sorts of things.  Coaches are trained now to play the players until the doctors tell them otherwise.  The doctors, for whatever reason, now are a little bit (pause).  They can’t examine a player in this case.  I mean they tried to examine RGIII.  He circled around and went back in the game.  So the system is flawed along the way.  There has to be a protocol put in place to protect players from themselves because we are going to play until we are told we are not allowed to play.

SIMMS: The system is in place.  It’s up to the coach to go by what he sees…  When you watch the field and if he’s not doing the job, and you know it’s not helping your football team, that is when you make the decision.  You don’t listen to the player.

On team doctors…

COLLINSWORTH: …I think there should be two doctors.  I think there should be a team doctor and there should be a players’ doctor that is voted on every team.  And if either one of those doctors are uncomfortable with the player playing in the game for any reason they can go to the head coach and say X, Y, Z should be out of the game and that automatically disqualifies him from the game.  Because as we speak right now, I’ve never liked the whole concept of team doctor anyway, but as we speak right now, doctors are in a relationship with these teams that sometimes is a bit financial and sometimes is a bit professional and there are issues with that relationship.  And we experienced all this first-hand with Jay Cutler.   Anything you want to compare it to, that is a direct comparison that we have to think about.

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