He’s the longest-tenured QB in Bucs franchise history. He’s taken 10 snaps in 10 NFL seasons. And he’s best known for holding up a drunk Tom Brady at a Super Bowl parade. The Life and Times of Ryan Griffin:
from the team’s booze-soaked championship boat parade along Hillsborough River was a plastered Tom Brady returning ashore, tottering past news cameras as he leaned on a teammate who looked more like a bouncer hauling a troublemaker out of a bar.winkingly blamed his drunkenness
At first these parts of Griffin’s résumé can seem confusingly paradoxical: Players often say that the cutthroat NFL is abbreviated from Not For Long, so how can someone possibly stick around for a whole decade—predominantly on his team’s active roster, no less—despite rarely taking the field? The truth, however, is that his lack of playing time explains“It’s pretty unprecedented,” Brate says. “But that’s just a testament to who he is as a player and a person.
Griffin approaches work with a similarly mature attitude today, recalling a piece of advice that fellow Tulane alumnus and former Bucs quarterback Shaun King once gave him about surviving at the bottom of the depth chart: “You gotta come in every day and compete like you want to win, but if you want to stick around, you can’t be ruffling feathers. … The biggest thing is, if you’re going to be here, try to be an asset to the team, and really support the starting quarterback.
Aside from his usual handful of annual exhibition appearances—“He’s instrumental in our offense not being a joke in the second half of preseason games,” Brate says—coaching up teammates is sometimes the only thing that Griffin does on the field. “I can get reps whenever Tom doesn’t practice, but it’s few and far between,” he says. “That’s definitely the hardest part of my role. You want to play.”
Connecting with tight end O.J. Howard up the middle for five yards to open the drive, and running back Dare Ogunbowale on what Brate recalls as “a nice little checkdown” for another 13 on third down, Griffin marched the Bucs near midfield in short order. But consecutive incompletions led to a punt after just six plays and 22 yards, Winston returned for Tampa’s next drive, and Griffin returned to his usual sideline perch. “I felt like I did well,” Griffin says. “I was fully prepared.
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