I covered this story for Uproxx when it happened. Rg3 said he still thinks he’s the best QB in the league. I felt and still feel a touch of guilt mocking him for it because I got a look at the context and it’s definitely not nearly as bad as the media made it out to be. This was certainly a big case of the media taking a quote out of context and turning that quote into the story. In context his quote isn’t quite so bad. It’s still pretty overconfident and slightly arrogant, but it’s not unreasonably so. Honestly I get what he was trying to say, but he’s bad with words and he had any number of ways he could have said it, but he chose this particular route. Here is the whole quote:

“I don’t feel like I have to come out here and show anybody anything or why I’m better than this guy or better than that guy. It’s more about going out and affirming that for me, I go out and I play, I know I’m the best quarterback on this team. I feel like I’m the best quarterback in the league and I have to go out and show that,”

“Any athlete at any level, if they concede to someone else, they’re not a top competitor, they’re not trying to be the best that they can be. There’s guys in this league that have done way more than me. But, I still view myself as the best because that’s what I work toward every single day.”

It’s bad and it’s not. On one hand, it seems like he’s using his confidence as a motivational tool, not unlike how most players would do something similar to self motivate. He thinks he’s the best, and what motivates him to get out there is showing that he’s the best and re-affirming his mentality. He thinks if you view yourself as inferior, it makes you inferior, because you’ve lost that mental edge. It’s his way of motivating himself. That’s not a crime and I doubt he’s the only player who sees himself that way. (Cough Cough Deion Sanders.)

At the same time, lol RG3 you couldn’t have figured out a way to word that better, in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an overconfident douche? At least when Eli and Flacco  got in hot water for tooting their own horn too much, it happened after a reporter successfully baited them. This was a bit overdoing it and he said it pretty un-baited. RG3 has always had a big ego, in that way he might legit be the best QB in the league.

Anyway at this point I just kind of pity him. As egotistical as he can be, he really was a good QB who got used as a pawn between a jerk coach and a even jerkier owner, and now he’s irreparably broken beyond repair and what Skins fans once saw as a decade of relevance ahead of them has turned into mush and disappointment, again. I don’t even know if Skins fans still like him, or if he just represents another mistake for the franchise to them, which might have explained the Kirk Cousins love last season before Kirk Cousins flopped. If I was a Skins fan I’d probably wish him the best, expect the worst, and desire to move on instead of waiting for him to possibly be good again.