THE REAL MCCOY
Coach won’t say much, but Colt knows the deal as he steps in as backup
Colt McCoy expects the Giants will begin installing Jason Garrett’s offense on Monday through the Zoom video conference app.
And he can probably expect some remote media training while he’s at it, since it took McCoy only about two minutes to spill what Joe Judge has refused to say for three months:
Daniel Jones is the Giants’ 2020 starting quarterback.
“I’m sure you guys all know the structure, I’m assuming,” McCoy, 33, said in a conference call Wednesday. “Daniel is the starting quarterback. He was the sixth pick in the draft, and he has a super bright future.”
Of course, all kidding aside, it’s no secret that Jones is the starter and McCoy is here to be the capable veteran backup, despite Judge’s reluctance to anoint the kid.
McCoy also is already reinforcing his reputation as a good teammate. He’s spoken with Jones multiple times since signing and is eager to collaborate on learning the new offense.
McCoy’s best advice for Jones, though, might come from the insight he gained in 2011, when an NFL lockout severely hampered his preparation for his second season.
McCoy minced no words describing how huge of a setback it was for his career as a young quarterback. And Jones, is about to lose out on months of normal preparation for his critical second year.
“That was probably the worst thing to happen to me as a young quarterback,” McCoy, a 2010 third-round pick of the Browns, said of that 2011 lockout. “I played my rookie year, and then we went into the lockout going into my second year. I didn’t get the playbook until we had two or three weeks of training camp. That was the first time I knew anything, and it was a completely new system. I played decent that year, but our team certainly struggled.
“I think I can take some experience and some lessons learned from that and hopefully help Daniel,” he continued. “I think Daniel is prepared for this, he played a lot more his rookie year than I did.”
McCoy started 13 games in that 2011 season (coached by Pat Shurmur, coincidentally) and has not started more than four in any year since.
He’s proven to be capable and supportive and hard-working, however, and the Giants’ brass liked what they saw in his ability to play steadily on short notice.
“The one thing that coach Judge and coach Garrett told me is that we watched all your tape for 10 years and you have started a ton of games in this league,” he said. “You also have been a backup and when you were called to come off the bench you have always stepped in and won the game and played well and played up to a standard.”
McCoy said he expects to get his playbook on Monday, when teams with firstyear coaches originally were scheduled to open their offseason programs, two weeks ahead of the rest of the league.
And he said whatever the plan is for coaches teaching the scheme to players, one important way to recreate normal offseason work will be to make sure players collaborate, too. That’s especially important for a team at a disadvantage of installing a brand offense during an offseason so unorthodox.
“I’m hoping that there is some interaction between players,” he said. “You are listening to your coach, but maybe we can have interaction with the players or you can hop on a (separate) call with some of the other guys. So you can ask, ‘Hey, how did you feel about that or do you like the depth of that route? Is that how you were taught?’ So you can go through a lot of different things with them.
“All 31 other teams are facing this same challenge,” he said. “I think some teams who are going to continue in the same system maybe have a little bit of an advantage. I think the teams like us who have a new coach and a new system have a little bit of a disadvantage. That can’t be a crutch or an excuse, either. We just have to figure out ways to get creative and (make sure) that the first time we can toss the ball around and run some plays, we are all on the same page. Hopefully we can figure that out.”