“It was almost like watching a kid mature right before your eyes,” declared The Bleacher Report’s easily impressed Daymon Johnson. “He’s going to be a good quarterback,” said Pittsburgh LB James Farrior of Cleveland rookie QB Colt McCoy after yesterday’s 28-10 Steelers victory. “He showed some innate things that I’m sure they’re excited about — and they should be,” gushed Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin, to which Cleveland Frowns’ Peter Pattakos replies, “? If we’d had such success game planning against the guy, we’d probably want to keep playing against him too. Why would we expect anything but this kind of treachery from these sociopaths?”
The Real McCoy. More than ready, except that he didn’t lead a single scoring drive until garbage time, with just under six minutes left in the game and the Steelers holding a 21-3 lead (the Browns first field goal was a result of a 65-yard interception return by Joe Haden).
It makes little sense to evaluate a quarterback’s performance by any measure other than drives that end in a score, and by this measure, McCoy’s performance couldn’t have been much worse. It’s clear enough that the Steelers were daring McCoy to beat them with the pass and had no trouble tightening up when it counted. It’s why McCoy ended up taking 5 sacks (the previous high for Browns quarterbacks this season was 3) and getting hit 9 more times. It’s also why McCoy threw two interceptions, and was lucky to avoid a third that was dropped by LaMarr Woodley who had the ball thrown right to his hands.
Looking past his inflated statistics, McCoy’s performance yesterday was objectively poor by any useful measure. The fact that a quarterback is being hailed this morning because his interceptions weren’t returned for touchdowns is sad. That folks are calling for him to start for the rest of the season based on this performance is scary. It’s understood that McCoy wasn’t really playing with any receivers even before Josh Cribbs and Mohammed Massaquoi were cheap-shotted out of the game by James Harrison, but both Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace have led meaningful scoring drives under similar constraints. Again, McCoy didn’t lead a single one yesterday. Not even a field goal.