There was one drive in Wednesday's Ravens Steelers game where Robert Griffin looks familiar in a good way.

Griffin struggled a spot started duty for Baltimore, looking nothing like the 2012 version that played the best rookie season at quarterback we've ever seen before.

A drive in the second quarter, he ran well, logging his longest run in eight years and through decisively.

He's not as fast as he used to be, and that arm that made him a can't miss prospect doesn't have the same zip.

But there was a glimpse of what could have been.

The fall of Robert Griffin remains the tragedy.

Somehow he was.

The future of the NFL was stuck in the past.

The league was beginning to embrace a paradigm shift toward athletic quarterbacks and spread offenses, but wasn't quite sure how to do it.

And Griffin, In many ways, the prototype of the 2020 quarterback wanted to be a classic pocket passer because he had been told his whole life those were really quarterbacks.

He's watched his team starter, Lamar Jackson, become an M v P B in the quarterback.

Griffin didn't wanna be his body is now healthy enough to do so without fear or concern.

But his time is up and has been for years.

The NFL is now everything we expected it will become when we saw Griffin in 2012, but not at all.

The league is now full of guys like Griffin, but sadly, he's not one of them.

Shockwaves rippled through the nation's capital on Wednesday after the Wizards traded longtime floor General John Wall to Houston for former M V P Russell Westbrook.

The semantics of the deal will long be critiqued, but here's what really matters.

John Wall is a D.

C legend far beyond basketball.

What was part of the city's culture in particular, it's black culture.

He was everywhere from Howard's homecoming music videos of shot, glitzy celebrity softball games with while a Yet the city truly loves him Because of the five time All Stars connection with the People Wall, the 2015 16 NBA Cares Community Assist award winner has donated money and time to countless charitable causes in D.

C.

His 26 points, 17 assists effort against Boston in 2014 is memorable, but not more than the tears he shed postgame dedicating the performance to a six year old girl he befriended who had recently passed from cancer.

And his dedication of D.

C s Ward 81 of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods, is his deepest tie.

His 20 to assist foundation raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent assistance during the pandemic, and over Thanksgiving, 1000 mills were distributed to those same residents to in his own words.

I come from that environment from the outside looking in the fan base.

Satin over a point guard who hasn't played in two years might be out.

But for the city, not having them here is even honor.

48 of the 546 players in the NBA tested positive for Cove in 19 between November 24th and November 30th.

That's nearly 9% of the league now.

Granted, that's less than the national average of 10%.

But you have to consider is it safe to start in the NBA season?

Look, it's clear the n B A and it's players, like other pro leagues, are accepting some degree of covert risks on the 134 page health and safety protocols issued by the league says that independent cases or small or otherwise expected number of cove in 19 cases won't trigger a decision to suspend or cancel the season.

But it's not just the positive test numbers that matter.

What seems to get lost in discussions about covert and sports are the long term effects of testing positive approximately 10% of people who've had Cove in 19 experienced, prolonged symptoms, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Thousands upon thousands of people worldwide have suffered symptoms like losing their sense of taste and smell, which happened to Rudy Gobert or brain fog, fatigue, depression or harder respiratory issues.

Months after testing positive, everyone knows there are risks here.

I just wonder how much they're considering the risks that they cannot see the ones that could affect players for months or years to come back in 1950 The Associated Press pulled hundreds of writers for survey on sports in the first half of the 20th century, who with writers chooses the greatest American athletes of those 50 years, while three of the top 17 were Olympic decathletes, three including the athlete chosen is the greatest of them all, Jim Thorpe.

But in 1999 when the AP did its greatest athlete of the entire century poll, Thorpe was the Onley decathlete in the top 50.

Rafer Johnson was 61.

This week, Johnson died at the age of 86.

And let me tell you, there's no way.

There were 60 athletes in the 20th century greater than Rafer Johnson at a time when most people consider the Olympic decathlon champion the greatest athlete on the planet in injured Johnson won the silver medal in 1956 in Melbourne.

Then four years later in Rome, he would set the Olympic record to win the gold.

Yes, track and field became less important to us in Johnson's lifetime, but that shouldn't diminish our appreciation for his greatness.

Johnson also happened to be a man of tremendous integrity, grace and conviction.

He was a champion of the Special Olympics.

He was also there in June 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was shot to death in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Johnson was among those who subdued RFK's assassin.

Johnson's was a big life playing for John Wooden wasn't near the top of his resume, and he made history again and again 61.

No, Rafer was much bigger than that.

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