Doug Kapustin/For The Washington Post - Though he's a Ravens fan, Robert Patrick Griffin III of Pasadena, Md., lets his 6-month-old son, Brayden, wear a Redskins jersey -- mostly because it bears the name he shares with the quarterback, the more famous RG3.
If you need to find Robert Griffin III on Sunday, look no further than FedEx Field. He’ll be in the stands, wearing a Baltimore Ravens jersey, rooting loudly against Robert Griffin III’s Redskins.
“Huge rivalry game; I’m not missing this one,” the other RG3 was vowing the other day. “I’m a diehard Ravens fan.”
Insight on the Redskins and all the latest news from Post reporters Mike Jones and Mark Maske.
So from one RG3 to another, much more famous one: Booooo?
No, said the Baltimore-born, 24-year-old, heating-and-air-conditioning-unit-installing Robert Patrick Griffin III. “I love the Ravens; that’s my team. But that RG3, he’s hard not to like, I’ll tell you that.”
Robert Lee Griffin III, the Redskins’ rookie quarterback, is an NFL supernova. The 22-year-old with the incandescent personality and jaw-dropping game leads the league in jersey sales and the Redskins in popular acclaim.
There are people driving around with RG3 license plates, and people transforming themselves into RG3 superheroes. A bunch of fans were RG3 for Halloween, including a kid who dressed as “RJew3.”
RG3 this, RG3 that, RG3 ad infinitum: His name and visage are everywhere, because just about everybody seems to love Robert Griffin III.
It’s a pretty fun time, then, to be an RG3 — any RG3. At least seven Robert Griffin IIIs live in the District, Maryland and Virginia, according to voter registration and other public records.There are scores of other Robert Griffins, sans Roman numeral, in the region, too.
“I was at the Golden Corral recently and there was a couple of guys talking about the Redskins and Robert Griffin, and I said: ‘I’m the real Robert Griffin,’” said Robert Talbot Griffin, a white 72-year-old retired newspaperman from Baltimore.
“I showed those guys my driver’s license, and they got a charge out of that,” RGI recalled. “There’s obviously no connection, but people call RG3 my grandson.”
His “grandson” won the Heisman Trophy in college. He was the second player selected in the 2012 NFL Draft. He currently has the second-highest passer rating in the NFL. He has produced more fantasy football points than any other NFL player this season. He is a human highlight reel of uncommon talent.
He is not uncommonly named, though. In fact, at Baylor University, his teammates included Robert Torrez Griffin, an offensive lineman who wound up being drafted by the New York Jets, 201 spots behind RG3.
Using 1990 Census data — the most recent survey for which both first and last name frequencies were published — Leonard A. Stefanski, a statistics professor at North Carolina State University, calculates that .00264 percent of U.S. males have the name “Robert Griffin.”
That’s approximately two or three Robert Griffins for every 100.000 men, said Stefanski, who crunched the numbers for the Post on behalf of the American Statistical Association. By comparison, Stefanski said, there are about 12 to 13 times as many James Smiths as Robert Griffins.
It’s unclear how many RG3s there might be out there, throwing deep down the sidelines of life. But here’s another one: Robert Lewis Griffin III, a 70-year-old insurance agency owner in Midlothian, southwest of Richmond.
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