Ask your average Bucs fan what he thinks about Gerald McCoy, and you’ll get every grade in the Book. You’ll get some A’s and some F’s, you’ll hear what a future star he is, and you’ll get the Bust word too. He get’s compared to Booger McFarland, and of course Warren Sapp. The truth is, he is all of those, and none of them. Now Injury Prone is likely to creep up as well.
Gerald McCoy, or GMC as he is commonly referred to, is Defensive Tackle from Oklahoma who still has barely played enough games to qualify for his rookie season. All told he has 18 games to his credit. He started right off the bat in 2010, but was injured and subsequently put on Injured Reserve after week 13. Some would say McCoy was just starting to come on around week 9 playing Carolina at home. He had his first 5-tackle day, with 2 passes defended and a fumble. The next week he got his first sack against the 49ers, then got two more sacks the next week against Baltimore. After that McCoy went down.
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This year McCoy got a sack in week 4 vs. the Colts where he had a 6-tackle night. He got hurt the next week at San Francisco, and should be back for the Saints game this coming week. What is not measured however is the penetration that McCoy causes, the disruption that makes the QB feel uneasy which leads to a mistake. It’s exactly what he did in college, and it’s exactly why the Bucs drafted him. It’s also the same reason Bucs fans are calling him a bust.
To understand we have to do a little history lesson; Gerald McCoy’s best year at Oklahoma got him 6.5 sacks, his junior season. He went down to 6 in his senior year, with a grand total of 14 sacks in all three of his years with the Sooners. The Bucs did not draft a sack machine; they drafted a Defensive Tackle that has an explosive first step, quick penetration, major disruption; deverything the Bucs coveted from the position.
The problem in all of this is a fella we see on the NFL network who is headed to Canton, OH one day. Warren Sapp played the 3 technique on the Bucs D-Line just as McCoy does, but as I said, Sapp is headed to the Hall of Fame one day. Sapp is one of a kind, once in a lifetime. To expect GMC to be another Sapp would be the same as the 49ers to expect Alex Smith to be another Joe Montana, or Bills running back Fred Jackson to be another Thurman Thomas.
Will Gerald McCoy play better? Truthfully he’s not playing that bad right now. He is causing disruption, and that’s what the Bucs want. In the future, you’ll hear his name more and more, but it may not be sacks, it may just be pressures, which do a lot of the same thing- create turnovers, which come from mistakes by the QB who is hurried and cannot sit back there long without making a quick decision to do something.
This info is not lost on the Bucs, they know quite well what kind of player GMC is, they did their homework and drafted him! And yes, spending a top pick on a DT who can control the line of scrimmage and do what you want him to do IS worth the pick. What the Bucs are doing, is drafting defensive ends around McCoy who can bull rush to the QB. The sacks wont come from the Defensive Tackle positions, but from the ends instead. You can only double team one or two players; someone else is going to get to the QB.
Of course this is all in hindsight now, as McCoy is lost for the year, but he will have to live with the idea that many have INJURY PRONE ready to be applied to him. If he goes down for any significant amount of time next year, he will have to live with that label for a long, long time.
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