Despite what Osi Umenyiora might believe, there's no denying Robert Griffin III is already a huge NFL star.
Andrew Luck went No. 1 overall in the NFL draft, but it's Griffin, the No. 2 pick, who has captured the imagination of football fans, both in D.C. and across the country. But on the eve of his first training camp, the Washington Redskins' rookie quarterback is ready to set all that attention to the side.
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"It's great and easy to balance that now because the team doesn't look at me that way, they don't look at me like a celebrity," Griffin told reporters Wednesday. "Yeah, I'm their quarterback, and I'm the guy that's going to lead them and lead them to victory. But there's no celebrity, there's no autographs in the locker room, for the most part. I'm not RG3 to them, I'm just Robert."
(RG3, Bob, Robert ... this is getting hard to keep track of.)
Dovetailing with his point about football taking center stage, Griffin said he's about to considerably lower his profile.
"I'm not going to any awards shows or doing any commercial during the season, so all that's done," he said. "I did my work during the offseason, whether it was with marketing or just football work, making sure I stayed in shape and stayed on top of the playbook. I made sure I did all that while making sure I handled my business."
Finding a balance -- or a clean cut-off point -- between the fruits of his incredible popularity and his job on the football field can't be easy. We don't doubt Griffin can pull it off.
