Kirk Cousins

Redskins adapt to RG3-related marketing conundrum

Published Sep. 4, 2015 10:11 a.m. ET

foxsports

By Jason Rowan

The Washington Redskins cannot seem to get out of their own way, as another day brought another apparent controversy for the dysfunctional organization. And not surprisingly, it involved the recently benched Robert Griffin III.

The team had a pretty clever social media marketing campaign running through the summer where it attempted to generate hype for the upcoming regular season with posts in which the amount of days remaining until Week 1 corresponded with a jersey number of one of the team’s players.

For instance, here’s a tweet from Wednesday noting that only 11 days remained until the Redskins open the season against the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 13, which of course meant DeSean Jackson was featured.

Yep, that’s offensive tackle Trent Williams … with a No. 71 jersey. But it's not as it seems, as noted by D.C. Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg:

But Thursday’s tweet wasn’t at all a slight at backup quarterback Robert Griffin III. You’ll notice the “Countdown to Game day” graphic is formatted differently than the “Days Until Kickoff” graphic. The theme of the “Countdown to Game day” graphic also doesn’t involve matching a player’s number to the days remaining until Sept. 13, as evidenced by Friday’s graphic featuring No. 94 Preston Smith and noted by Redskins managing editor Andrew Walker.

As noted, RG3 is still a member of the team, so there was really no reason why the Redskins couldn’t have used him, especially given he’s dealing with concussion symptoms and wouldn't have been starting in Week 1 regardless of head coach Jay Gruden anointing Kirk Cousins as the starting quarterback for the future by saying, “It’s Kirk’s team.”

The Redskins may have gotten some grief for using Griffin’s image in the social media marketing blitz in light of how he’s likely nearing the end of his career with the team, but the fact that his absence from the campaign was noticed speaks volumes.

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