For most of Robert Griffin III's rookie season, it looked as though the NFL had found the face to replace Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.
No league is better at pushing its athletes out front of the sport. In recent years, they've become icebreakers.
Manning and Brady – cereal-box cover models who defined a footballing generation – redeem the NFL on a weekly basis. For the few hours they're on a field on Sunday, no one talks about brain injuries or domestic violence embarrassments.
Griffin was Manning/Brady 2.0 – a quarterback for the video game-era. Flanked by his affably bland counterpart, Andrew Luck, he was going to lead the NFL through the next decade. On Wednesday, it all collapsed.
The NFL is so superhumanly athletic, it's difficult to appreciate the athleticism. It's not until you get down at field level that you tap in to American football's core dichotomy – people this big should not be this fast.
If you've never experienced it from a few feet away, it is breathtaking. Literally. Empathy is forcing you to imagine yourself out there, in the midst of all these armoured, 270-pound chargers. And then being hit by them. And then snapping in half.
You're thinking about that, and you're standing there holding your breath.
TV dulls that sensation. Everyone looks equally fulsome and equally fleet. On the screen, NFL players can seem almost normal.
Griffin was the exception. On television, he seems reedy, even small. In life, he is huge – 6-foot-2, 225 pounds.
In a league full of big, fast men, Griffin combined those traits like few before him. The Washington Redskins traded away their short-term future to get him (three first-round picks and a second). At first, it seemed like a ridiculous bargain. Then, as they do with most things, the 'Skins screwed it up.
Upon arrival, Griffin began the process of redefining offence in the NFL. All the way back in 2012, the read-option – freeing the quarterback to either pass, hand off or run at his discretion – was a foreign language. Defences were still in the midst of deciphering it. Griffin was the read-option's Rosetta stone.
It was more than quickness. Griffin moved as though he'd already been through this reality once, and had come back in time to do it again, but better.
Manning and Brady and now Luck were stolid and efficient. They were better than most men. Griffin was out there doing things that should not be done.
He was a superhero.
Late in the year, Griffin was hit in the right knee, spraining it badly. He skipped a week and returned for the final game of the season. A month after the initial problem, he made his first playoff appearance. Early in the game, on a fumbled snap, his knee gave way excruciatingly. He went off in obvious pain, came back in, and injured the knee again. This was the future of a billion-dollar football club being treated as if he could snap on new limbs, action figure-style.
As it turned out, medics had not cleared Griffin to play. But he wanted to, and the team foolishly gave in to him.
He had major surgery and that was that.
We've spent two seasons patiently – and then, not-so patiently – waiting for the old Griffin to return. One of the less sensible offshoots of the rise of analytics is the belief that anyone who has been good, will be good again, regardless.
That Griffin that we saw in the second-half of his rookie season – the one who had figured out the NFL – has never come back. And never will.
He's lost that first step. More to the point, he's lost his mojo. A young man who once read the game so easily now has no idea what's going on out there. He can't run anywhere, so defences just back up on him. He can't find open receivers.
He can't do any of the basic things quarterbacks need to do. At the age of only 24, he is broken, physically and mentally. Washington broke him.
They finished the job on Wednesday, announcing that a healthy Griffin will not play this Sunday against Indianapolis. Clearly, the comparison against the Colts' Luck – who's well on his way to becoming the best quarterback in football – would be too jarring.
Washington is trying to sell this as the pause that refreshes.
"We just want him to take a step back, work on his craft," said Redskins coach Jay Gruden.
It's a transparent attempt to keep Griffin's trade value up while they try to move him. Given how fragile he is, they can't even risk showcasing him at this point. He'll never play for this team again.
Someone will take a chance on Griffin. Someone always does, considering what a talent he once was. But he's done. He is a journeyman at best, and one doubts he could ever adapt to that role.
It's a small, annoying setback for the NFL. They'll have to rely solely on Luck, and his mountain-man mien, to prop up PSAs and billboards.
What Griffin is is a reminder of the brutality of the game. Even a player this big, this fast, and this smart can be undone in an instant.
Griffin is another example of why football is so dominant in America – because it takes the most remarkable athletes in the world and puts them a hair's breadth from violent disaster, week in and week out.
Cathal Kelly