Oops, Colt McCoy Did It Again
Last week at the Cleveland Browns’ OTAs, Colt McCoy was offered the chance to speak about how his season ended last year.
McCoy was also featured in Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback, which centered on an exclusive interview with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
When the most famous football writer in America interviews the commissioner of America’s most popular pro sport, and they talk about the sport’s most sensitive issue, they talk about Colt McCoy.
It’s pretty doubtful this is the type of profile the Browns want their backup quarterback to have.
What happened to McCoy last year was a complete mess, with fault lying on both the Browns management side and the McCoy family side. At this point, I am sure the Browns would like to forget the whole thing ever happened and move on. They probably prefer a guy they’ve pegged as a second stringer do the same.
Everyone knows Brandon Weeden was drafted to be the starter. His OTA and training camp tests are mere formalities, and that means McCoy’s new job is to work hard and start blending in to the scenery.
But when he was asked about his ill-fated encounter by the league’s dirtiest player last season, his words, while not dishonest, still serve to continue the debate over him.
Highlights via the Dan Patrick Show:
- McCoy again reiterated that he was promised a quarterback competition. Does everyone know the score here expect him? Or is he bent on upholding the illusion of fairness in professional sports?
- He said he felt concussion symptoms for five to six weeks after the hit. That might be true, but his mention of it is still designed to create a reasonable doubt over his abilities. He cast a similar preserving shadow over his arm a year earlier. When asked why he struggled to throw passes towards the end of 2010, he claimed his arm injury from the BCS National Championship Game had not yet healed.
- He also said he doesn’t remember the James Harrison hit at all, which is a new one, expanding the injury and absolving him of the game-sealing interception he threw moments later in the end zone. If McCoy’s a company man, he evades these questions to avoid making the Browns look bad. Or maybe he doesn’t do the interview.
Browns fans are being offered a self-serving mixture of truth and excuse from him. Instead of putting a sore subject to bed for the organization, as I’m sure they’d prefer, McCoy keeps the music playing. He feels he has been wronged, and he is out to clear his name.
While fans can sympathize, the Browns as an organization should have none of it.
A backup should be seen, not heard (except if he’s a New York Jet). McCoy doesn’t seem interested in toeing the company line of sports clichés.
Clichés like, “There’s no ” I ” in ‘Team’.”
Was Seneca Wallace just telling the bosses what they want to hear when he changed his tune and said he wanted to mentor Brandon Weeden? Yes he was, and that’s why they probably prefer to keep him as the backup despite his price tag.
Did Colt McCoy get a raw deal with the Browns? You could say so. But he was also a third-round draft pick who was never guaranteed a chance to start, and he at least got that chance.
That’s the game.