Last thing RGIII needs is McNabb's advice

Donovan McNabb says he'd like to sit down with Robert Griffin III and have a little chat about the right things to do and say when you happen to be a budding superstar quarterback in the NFL.

In fact, McNabb would really like it if he and his father could sit down with Griffin and his father, RG2, and the two McNabbs could provide a double team of awesome advice and wisdom.

McNabb has been trying to get in Griffin's ear since last season, he told the Washington Post. "Someone on his end was supposed to link us up, and it never happened. No big deal," he said.

No coincidence, either, if Griffin has any sense. McNabb offering advice on how to properly behave, and have those in your family behave, is like Paris Hilton offering advice on chastity.

"It's too much right now. It's just too much," McNabb said of Griffin's public visibility. "I get some of the things he's doing to draw attention to himself: the Adidas commercials, going out and enjoying the life of a young, famous NFL quarterback. I understand RG has a lot of stuff going on.

"But if you're coming off ACL surgery, you don't need to be having a press conference at OTAs. Every week? Really? It becomes a circus, a sideshow. It takes away from the focus of what those sessions are supposed to be about: the team."

McNabb is right that Griffin has a high profile. He has been grand marshal at parades and has shown up at the Kentucky Derby and a bunch of other A-list events. He made the curious decision to register for wedding gifts at Bed, Bath & Beyond and then tweeted a photo of all the stuff people had purchased for him and his intended. And, yes, once a week at OTAs, he has stood around for a few minutes to give the media and Washington Redskins fans an update on his recovery from knee surgery.

"Too much," McNabb says. Maybe it's too much for McNabb because it has gotten a little quiet around the hacienda in Arizona these days. He might not be fully gone - there is the occasional TV appearance - but McNabb is well on the way to being just another piece of yesterday's news. And here's this young, talented quarterback playing for a franchise where McNabb bombed badly, getting all this attention and adoration. It's enough to make a man . . . well, jealous.

There's no other explanation for why McNabb thinks that anything Griffin does is any of his business. By latching onto Griffin in the role of Mr. Mentor, maybe McNabb thinks he can reclaim some of the reflected spotlight. Maybe people will talk about him again. After all, he has so much to share.

McNabb didn't like it, for instance, when Robert Griffin II, the quarterback's father, said he wants coach Mike Shanahan to have RG3 throw the ball more and not be exposed so often on running plays this season.

"You can't say what he said because it almost undermines his son, who has to answer all the questions about it later. Now, we all know what he said was right," said McNabb, who never minds taking a shot at Shanahan, either. "But that's something you voice behind closed doors because otherwise it creates a wedge that didn't have to be there. No team needs those kinds of things hovering over them."

He's right, of course. I mean, that would be like a quarterback's mother calling a team's success "bittersweet" because it came when her son was temporarily sidelined by injury. That's the kind of thing that would never happen to a wise man like Donovan McNabb.

"Look, I say these things because I'm a big fan of his," McNabb said. "I just don't want him to draw attention to himself in the wrong ways when he doesn't need to. I've talked to Russell Wilson many times. We've had some great conversations. I know what it's like to be young, good and have the world looking at you." (Mental note: Russell Wilson is going to be messed up for a while now.)

If McNabb and Griffin got together, the elder statesman could show him how to moonwalk, and how to act like a fool during introductions just before stinking up a playoff game, and how to subtly blame your teammates for your own mistakes. There is so much good advice to give.

So far, however, Griffin hasn't made himself available to receive that advice. Maybe that means he's been too busy, but maybe it means he's pretty sharp already.