Alan Truex: Colt McCoy is the gunslinger Washington needs
Updated Wednesday, November 28
After the Washington Redskins lost their starting quarterback and a football game, Alex Smith’s backup, Colt McCoy, addressed his stricken teammates. Adding to the tension: an eerie flashback to 33 years earlier, to the day, when another quarterback, Joe Theismann, had suffered an even more gruesome broken leg in the nation’s capital.
Theismann was in attendance at FedEx Field when Smith’s right leg was fractured twice, at and near the ankle, career-threatening to a 34-year-old who relies on quickness and strength in the legs as much as in the right arm.
Smith has been to the Pro Bowl three times and once quarterbacked a team that reached the Super Bowl. In his first season with the Redskins he game-managed them into first place, at 6-3. He didn’t make big plays, but he avoided big mistakes: just 5 interceptions in his 9 ½ games.
So now it was all up to the backup, McCoy, who told his teammates in that somber postgame locker room: “You’re in good hands.”
Well, maybe not good enough.
His first throw of the season had been a touchdown, and even though he couldn’t quite catch the Houston Texans, McCoy gave his team hope for a better outcome on Thanksgiving Day in Arlington, Texas. Well, say the increasingly disgruntled Washingtonians, thanks for nothing.
In his first start in four years, the ex-Texas Longhorn ruined his homecoming with three picks – all ill-conceived, poorly thrown — to the Dallas Cowboys, who won 31-23 to take command of the division nobody really wants to own, the NFC East.
The Cowboys and Redskins are co-leaders at 6-5, Dallas having the tiebreaker with two head-to-head wins. Five games remain in the season, so the issue is hardly closed.
Dallas has the more daunting schedule. It includes a date Thursday night with Super Bowl favorite New Orleans and a Dec. 16 game in Indianapolis against rejuvenated Andrew Luck and the rapidly developing Colts.
If New Orleans wins on Thursday night – as a touchdown favorite – Washington will be back in first place.
McCoy meanwhile looks to a lineup of has-beens such as 5-6 Philadelphia (twice), 3-8 New York Giants, and 3-8 Jacksonville. The other team left on the Skins’ schedule is Tennessee, 5-6 and winner of one playoff game in 15 years.
McCoy should be up to this challenge. His 53-yarder to Vernon Davis was his team’s longest completion this year. His 268 passing yards in his start were 50 more than Smith’s average.
Indeed, McCoy validated Chris Simms, former QB of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Pro Football Talk): “His skill set is every bit as good as Alex Smith’s, if not better. He can scramble, and his arm is stronger than Alex Smith’s.”
Two years younger than Smith, McCoy is a quicker, stronger runner. In his two games McCoy has rushed six times, for 63 yards and 4 first downs. He was no more responsible for the loss in Arlington than the venerable Adrian Peterson, who was held to 35 yards on 12 carries. Peterson suffered a dislocated shoulder six weeks ago and admits “the strength isn’t where it needs to be.”
Washington’s mangled offensive line did not move anyone or provide much time for plays to materialize in the running or passing games.
Also, as the veteran safety D.J. Swearinger proclaimed with stunning candor: “You got to tackle. That’s why we don’t get respect as the Redskins.”
But neither Swearinger nor anyone else in a burgundy jersey could keep up with the Cowboys’ Amari Cooper, who caught 8 passes for 180 yards and two touchdowns.
Cooper had much more rapport with his quarterback, Dak Prescott, than McCoy had with his catchers. In the NFL, backups get almost no practice time with people they will play with if they’re ever asked to play.
McCoy lamented that he “didn’t have a lot of reps with those receivers,” that he sometimes was unsure of “depth of a receiver’s routes. . . . I thought he was making a break here and the ball ended up six inches behind him, and it’s a turnover. I know I can clean those things up.”
Here is the real McCoy, showing a touch of swagger that stops just short of cockiness. We saw it in his succession to Heisman Trophy winner Vince Young, who had delivered a national championship to Texas. “There won’t be another Vince Young,” he said, “but maybe there won’t be another Colt McCoy.”
Always on the edge of stardom, not quite attaining it, he didn’t win the Heisman but was runner-up. He didn’t win a national championship for the Longhorns, but he led them to the title game. He was moving them on the opening drive against Alabama when he wrecked his right shoulder on a designed run. It was a horrible way to end a senior season, and it put his career on a downward spiral.
The shoulder was not fully healed as he was evaluated for the 2010 NFL Draft. He completed all his passes for Pro Day, but scouts saw him strain on the deep ball. With doubts whether he was strong enough or tall enough at 6-1, he was a third-round draft pick. And by the most moribund of franchises, the Cleveland Browns. He started as a rookie and had a 6-15 record there, which put him in elite class for that dis-organization.
In four years of backup duty in Washington, McCoy impressed enough to earn a contract that pays him $7 million this season. The team could have invested more time in connecting him with first-team receivers, but it’s almost a moot point, given that their three best — Chris Thompson, Jamison Crowder and Paul Richardson — are injured.
McCoy’s second start will be next Monday night in Philly against a team wracked with as many injuries as Washington and, further, Super Bowl hangover. The visitors are 7-point dogs, but with ample time to prepare, McCoy could get hot with gunslinging like we never saw from Smith. This is the year of football scores that look like basketball –- pro or college. In a shootout, Colt McCoy is what you want, looking far downfield for whoever they still got.
