When asked whether or not Daniel Jones is "the guy" for the New York Giants to succeed, second-year safety Xavier McKinney answered without hesitation.
"Man, DJ is the guy. I've been seeing a lot of different stuff but, DJ is the guy," McKinney said on CBS Sports' "All Things Covered" podcast. "We don't need to really worry about all the other stuff. We believe in him, he believes in us, so we play as a team and we got his back, and he got ours. So that's how we look at it, that's how we go into it."
And that's exactly the sort of praise you'd expect from any teammate of a quarterback. What you might not expect, however, is for a player to shower similar praise on the quarterback of a fierce division rival. In this instance, we're talking about the Philadelphia Eagles, the longtime nemesis of the Giants in one of the most storied rivalries across major American sports.
That's exactly what happened, though, when McKinney was asked about his former teammate at Alabama and his current adversary in what could be another tight divisional race in the upcoming 2021 season.
"That dude there, he helped me out so much. And I don't even think he — like, I never really told him or nothing like that — but that dude helped me out so much as far as a mental standpoint, just because he showed me so much in what a leader should be," McKinney said. "He was one of those dudes where, even in the offseasons when we were conditioning, he always was the first to do everything, and it was crazy to watch it happen.
"I learned from him and when he left... I wanted to be the same way."
McKinney was lucky to work with three current NFL quarterbacks in his three-year stint with the Crimson Tide — the aforementioned Hurts, as well as Tua Tagovailoa and Mac Jones — and though he couldn't choose which one he'd prefer to have in a must-win scenario, the hosts of "All Things Covered" went with Hurts. To McKinney, that wasn't the wrong call.
"That dude, he's the definition of a real, true competitor," McKinney said. "Just how he played, how he carried himself. He never was too high, he never was too low, he never saw a time where, (in) them games where he got pulled or anything that happened, he didn't have no type of facial (expression). He was just even-keeled, man, and he'd go in the game and still play like he was playing the whole damn game.
"So that dude's a true competitor, man, and he really helped me out a lot in my career there at 'Bama."
Hurts entered into quite the precarious situation when he became the Eagles starting quarterback in the middle of the team's not-so-stellar 2020 season, and he performed admirably in many ways. With a huge upgrade at wide receiver in DeVonta Smith and a fresh slate, a new coach and a hopefully-healthy lineup around him, Hurts is looking to turn heads and prove McKinney right by acting as the leader that Eagles fans so desperately need.
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