ASHBURN, Va. — When Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III last squared off with fellow young, rising quarterback Colin Kaepernick of San Francisco last November, the Redskins were only 3-7.

But all hope wasn’t lost. After all, they had won their final seven games and the NFC East during Griffin’s record-setting rookie year of 2012.

However, Kaepernick threw three touchdown passes that night at FedEx Field while Griffin tossed an interception. The 49ers cruised to a 27-6 victory.

Washington wouldn’t win again until the second week of this season, a game that Griffin departed after less than nine minutes with a dislocated left ankle. He missed six weeks before starting the last two losses, to Minnesota and Tampa Bay.

So, as Griffin and Kaepernick prepare for their second meeting on Sunday in San Francisco, the former has lost eight consecutive starts in which he played the whole way and is just 3-13 in his 16 full games since tearing his right ACL and LCL in a January 2013 playoff loss to Seattle.

Griffin hasn’t been the same electrifying player since and has gone from beloved to booed in D.C.

And this week Griffin and his coach, Jay Gruden, managed to grab more than their share of the headlines at a time when the NFL seems more focused on non-football, social and legal issues.

After last Sunday’s shocking 27-6 home loss to lowly Tampa Bay, Griffin talked about how the whole team needs to do better.

Gruden didn’t disagree but on Monday asserted that Griffin had “fundamental flaws” in his game and should pay attention to himself rather than be concerned about the whole team.

“His footwork was below average,” Gruden said Monday about Griffin’s performance against the Bucs.

“He took three-step drops when he should have taken five. He took a one-step drop when he should have taken three on a couple of occasions. That can’t happen. He stepped up when he didn’t have to step up, stepped into pressure, read the wrong side of the field a couple of times. …

“There were some concepts there that we should have been on the same page (about) and the ball should have be (en out and it wasn’t. Maybe he couldn’t see, maybe there was pushing in his face. I couldn’t tell from the sideline. With some of these concepts that we had for the coverage we were playing against, we should have had some open receivers. … It was not even close to being good enough to what we expect.”

Even as he was being hailed by some for being so publicly forthright, Gruden himself decided to criticize somebody else — himself.

“I think it was a mistake on my part,” Gruden said at his press conference Wednesday, referring to his Monday remarks. “After a loss like that, we’re very disappointed in the way we played, and the question came up about how we played, and all that stuff from that. I just answered with the first thing that came to my mind, and sometimes the first thing that comes to your mind isn’t the smartest thing. It wasn’t the right thing to do on my part.”

Still, Gruden reiterated that Griffin’s play was less than stellar, although the coach tried to absorb some of the blame himself.

“It wasn’t great by any stretch by anybody,” Gruden said.” There were some things that I know Robert wished he could have done better. I wish I would have coached him up better, and there’s some things that we just have to figure out why he’s struggling with certain things and then figure it out and coach him up and get him ready because offensively, to score seven points any week with the offensive talent that we have is not good by any stretch.

“The first guy that gets looked at is the quarterback and the second guy is the offensive coordinator and of course the head coach. Both of us should be questioned equally. It takes everybody on a team to lay that goose egg and play as poorly as we did. And there are some things he can clean up and will clean up, but we have to get it done. We don’t have a lot of time and he’s at a stage right now in his career where we need to see improvements.”

Asked about his long-term plans at quarterback, Gruden sidestepped the question.

“I’ve said it before and it’s not just coach-speak, but honestly we are planning on San Francisco right now,” he said ” Once the season is over, we’ll take a long look at where we are as a football team at every position, not just the quarterback. And then we’ll make our decisions in-house and talk about them.”

The irony in this is that many followers of this situation believed Gruden was brought in to mentor RG3 because Mike Shanahan couldn’t manage the task.

Gruden gilded the current issue a bit.

“When you come out and have such great success as a rookie, it’s expected every time you walk out on a field,” Gruden said.

“People have got to understand that (Robert)’s still a young kid and defenses have changed and he’s got to change with them. He’s got to continue to grow and get better.

“We’ve got to do a better job of coaching him up and getting in his brain and finding out what he knows and what he doesn’t know. … He’s 24 years old and he wants everything to be perfect around him and yesterday was far from perfect. … He’s a talented kid. There’s no doubt about that.”

Gruden, Cincinnati’s offensive coordinator as Andy Dalton quarterbacked the Bengals to the playoffs during his first three seasons (2011-13), also said Monday that Griffin can be guilty of trying to do too much to reverse the fortunes of the Redskins, who are just 6-20 since his knee surgery.

“I think sometimes once the game gets going and the adrenaline starts going, sometimes you see things that maybe aren’t there,” Gruden said. “You speed things up when you shouldn’t speed things up, and you feel a sense of urgency that isn’t quite there. You just have to play with a little bit greater poise … That should come natural, and right now for whatever reason, (that isn’t) coming natural, and that’s on us as a staff. We have got to make sure we make it as natural for him as possible.”

Griffin’s press conference on Wednesday certainly wasn’t natural. Instead of being his usual gregarious, affable self, he uttered the phrase “focused on San Francisco” like a mantra nine times in just seven minutes and thirty seconds.

“Jay (Gruden) wants me to play better,”Griffin said. “I want to play better. We’re focused on San Francisco and making that happen. So, that’s all I’ve got to say about that.”

Griffin was asked if he considered not being in the spotlight as prominently.

“Yeah, man,” the quarterback countered. “Like I said, we’re focused on San Francisco. So that’s all we’ve got.”

NOTES: Among those not practicing Wednesday were OT Trent Williams (right MCL and ankle), DL Chris Baker (clavicle), LG Shawn Lauvao (concussion) and TE Jordan Reed (hamstring). … OLB Trent Murphy (PCL) was limited.