Gerald McCoy was a Bucs fan long before the team drafted him in 2010, and he’s still faithful to the squad now that he’s an NFL Network analyst.
That also means he saw Jayden Daniels up close and personal in Tampa Bay’s first and last official games this season, and like pretty much everyone else you talk to, he came away very impressed.
“When I watched him in preseason, I said, ‘this kid throws one of the best footballs I've seen, period.’ He just throws a very catchable, pretty football – that’s just talent, and it doesn’t always correlate to being a great quarterback, but seeing how he threw the ball with such ease, I thought this kid got something to him,” McCoy told BMitch & Finlay on Super Bowl Radio Row Monday. “When we played him Week 1, he ran the ball well, he didn't look rattled, he played through the game – and then you watch him play and you see what he's doing in the clutch, it’s amazing.”
McCoy harkened to a convo with Kurt Warner about that, and yes, Daniels is the same at all times, no matter the magnitude of the situation.
“You see what he's doing when it's crunch time, and Kurt said, what you're watching them do is something that they've been doing. You don't get in crunch time and change, or all of a sudden have to take a deep breath and center in; that’s how you are at all times,” McCoy said. “That's why it looks like he's like that in the clutch, but he's like that at all times, and you've seen him get more and more comfortable to where, hey, this is just football.”
He’s a passer who can run, not a running quarterback, and former defensive tackle McCoy explained just how hard that is to defend.
“I had the super-sized version of him in Cam Newton, who was one of those innovators who was doing it at that size. He was electrifying - there's exciting, there's explosive, and then there's electrifying – and that’s what Jayden Daniels has,” McCoy said. “You have to rush smart, but you can't rush scared. You want to build a well and keep guys like that in the pocket, and there’s a way to do it, but you have to be very aware. You can’t just rush free, because he’s a threat at all points of the game, every down.”
But that all said, McCoy was still surprised by just how Wild Card Weekend went down.
“Very surprised; they asked us on NFL Network how far Jayden could take the Commanders, and my answer was he can take them from Tampa International to Raymond James Stadium, and it stops there – but that’s not what he did,” McCoy said. “He took them and just kept going. In November and December, you start to see who's who, but if you want to win December or January, in the playoffs, you gotta be able to stop the run and run the ball, and you gotta pack a defense if you wanna win on the road. And that's what went under the radar with the Commanders: the defense and how well they were playing. We knew what Jayden Daniels was and the weapons he had, but we didn't know what the defense was going to do. They showed up and showed out, and this thing could keep growing.”