Redskins Bench Grossman, Will Start Beck

Added on Oct 19, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

Washington Redskins’ head coach Mike Shanahan said earlier this week he’d announce his starting quarterback for Sunday’s game at Carolina and true to his word he did just that. Rex Grossman will ‘ride the pine’ after throwing four interceptions in last week’s loss to Philadelphia. That’ll give the starting gig–for now–to BYU product John Beck.

Shanahan didn’t mince words when announcing the move:

“You can’t constantly turn the football over. And if you do, you’re going to lose your opportunity to lead the football team.”

For his part, Beck is ready to do his job:

“There’s been a lot of hard work that’s gone into this. You never know when your opportunity’s going to come, and you’ve always got to stay ready. I’ve tried to do that.”

“Things change in the blink of an eye.”

Shanahan is confident in Beck’s abilities:

“I have a lot of confidence in John Beck because he does have that mobility, that strong arm. I’m not going to be putting him in the Hall of Fame yet, but I really do believe he’s got a lot of talent.”

Grossman reacted pretty much as you’d expect:

“I was frustrated. Not completely surprised, but I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to come back off that game.”

Adding to the frustration in his view–a solid performance prior to the Eagles game:

“The frustrating part about it is I do think that they were good performances. The frustrating part is they should have been great. I had an opportunity to make it clear as day, and it wasn’t. For the first four games, I played well. And I could show you to prove it, but it doesn’t matter.”

He admits he may need to take a more conservative approach to taking care of the football:

“The only thing I could do that could maybe encompass all turnovers — just have a little more conservative approach to the fact that, hey, turnovers are bad, but they’re emotional mistakes that create emotion in the stands, create an odd emotion everywhere. Ultimately I’m responsible for the ball.”

The Redskins are currently a +2′ point NFL betting underdog against the Carolina Panthers at Charlotte, NC.