Former NFL player Robert Griffin III’s football career got off to a rollicking start. Fresh off winning a Heisman trophy, he was selected second in the draft by the then-Washington Redskins in the 2012 NFL draft.
He seemed unstoppable on the field, and though that season ended in injury, he was named NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, and ranked 15th by his peers in a hierarchy of top NFL players.
“One thing I didn’t know until a few years ago was that in 2012, I sold more jerseys than [Lionel] Messi,” RGIII told an audience at ADWEEK House during Cannes Lions last week. “That stat was mind-blowing to me.”
However, injuries soon derailed the trajectory of his playing career, and RGIII moved on from Washington four years later, with stints on the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens.
Today, he’s nurturing a career in media and multiple investments—including restaurants (Toca Madera, including the 1587 spot tied to Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Taylor Swift), advanced tech (the hologram company Proto), and Black-owned businesses, sticking to areas he genuinely knows and cares about.
Everything he backs has to actually improve people’s lives, he said, not just carry his name. For instance, he also personally coaches a 300-kid, 20-team 7-on-7 football organization.
“What I’ve learned over the course of my 16 years as a professional is that the more time you can give somebody the better,” he said.
RGIII spoke with 72andSunny global chief growth officer Damaune Journey, wearing pink shoes and hoochie daddy shorts. “Not everybody can pull off hoochie daddies,” Journey said.
Keep scrolling to read some extracts from their conversation, about overcoming adversity when few believe in you.
RGIII’s own Baylor teammates didn’t rank him as highly as other QBs
We were in the locker room during the summer workouts, and they’re like: Who would you take, [Auburn star quarterback] Cam Newton or [Stanford star quarterback] Andrew Luck? I’m not gonna lie, I got offended. Bro, my locker is right here, can y’all take that to the sauna or something?
I said, “You should take me,” and they were like, “You know, we just excluded you from the conversation.” I wasn’t mad at them, but I wanted to show them that you can trust me to be that guy…
…So I get to the NFL, I get drafted number two overall by the Washington Reds at the time, and it was almost like I restarted the whole process.
