Gerald McCoy didn’t hesitate when asked to name the least athletic quarterback he saw on Monday morning’s edition of The Dan Patrick Show. The former NFL defensive tackle first landed on Tom Brady, then quickly shifted after Dan Patrick pushed the comparison to Peyton Manning.
“Least athletic? Probably Tom Brady,” McCoy said.
“I mean, he's got incredible pocket feet. His pocket presence is ridiculous.
But that moving and running, my goodness.”
When Patrick asked whether Brady was actually less athletic than Manning, McCoy reversed course.
“Peyton, you know what, Dan? You might be right,” McCoy said.
“Peyton played football like he had already had hip replacements. It was like every two years, he went and got a new hip.
That's how Peyton played football. He would go down in a fetal position.
He wasn't even going to try to fight to get out of his side.”
McCoy also pointed to Peyton and Eli Manning as quarterbacks who understood when to get out of harm’s way, especially against pass rushers like Aaron Donald and Myles Garrett. He said he could understand why quarterbacks would choose to take the hit avoidance route instead of trying to absorb a shot from players of that caliber.
The comments came as Brady has also been dealing with scrutiny in another corner of his post-playing life: his work as a FOX analyst while serving as a part-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. Earlier this month, Brady addressed that criticism in a Sports Business Journal post.
“It’s clickbait for people, and it’s something that people have no idea what they’re really glomming onto,” Brady said. “They just put it out there in the world and see what sticks."
"So to me, I just focus on what I need to do to be prepared. That’s what I did as a player, and I go out there every week as a broadcaster and try to do the same thing.”
Brady is in the third year of his 10-year, $375 million contract with FOX, a deal that runs through 2029 at its halfway point. Even then, the end of the contract won’t automatically mean the end of his run with the network. His broadcasting work has drawn mixed reactions, with some games earning praise for his analysis and others bringing plenty of backlash.
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