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#Colt McCoy is imperfect choice after hellacious Giants week

#Colt McCoy is imperfect choice after hellacious Giants week

Joe Judge choosing Colt McCoy on Sunday night against the Browns instead of Daniel Jones feels like one of those damned-if-you-do damned if you don’t situations.

It is the right call, if only because Judge saw the need to protect his young franchise quarterback from himself and live to fight another day with him … and hindsight being 20/20, if he had sat Jones last week, he likely would have had him available for this week.

Washington coach Mike Shanahan once left a hobbled Robert Griffin III in too long in a 2012 wild-card playoff loss to the Seahawks instead of turning to backup Kirk Cousins in the fourth quarter or sooner, and his rookie franchise quarterback required reconstructive knee surgery and was never the same again.

“I’ll probably second-guess myself when you take a look at the second half — should have I done it earlier? I think you always do that, especially after you don’t win,” Shanahan said after that game.

Jones suffered a second injury, to his left ankle, because he could not protect himself adequately on a hamstrung right leg last Sunday.

And if the Cardinals could sack him six times, and since he would not be any more of a threat to use his legs as a weapon with Myles Garrett and Olivier Vernon bearing down on him, it made absolutely no sense not to keep him out of harm’s way.

Good for Judge and the medical team to err on the side of caution and resist temptation to try mortgage the future for the present in an attempt to steal the franchise’s first playoff berth since the 2016 season. Better late than never.

Giants
Colt McCoy
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

So the desperate Giants will try to upset the desperate Browns with McCoy at quarterback, with their shutdown corner, James Bradberry, in quarantine, with their offensive coordinator, Jason Garrett, in quarantine as well, with 2019 Browns coach Freddie Kitchens calling the plays for McCoy.

Judge doesn’t subscribe to the theory of the “revenge game,” but McCoy was pushed into oblivion after his 6-15 record under Eric Mangini and Pat Shurmur when the Browns drafted Brandon Weeden in the first round of the 2012 draft, and Kitchens was fired as Browns coach following a 6-10 finish last season. This will be McCoy’s fifth start in the past five seasons.

The Browns’ -6.5 betting line, if nothing else, tells us that this isn’t quite the Mission: Impossible that Giants-Perfect Patriots was in Super Bowl XLII, or certainly not Jets-Colts in Super Bowl III.

But for the Colt McCoy Giants to have any chance to reclaim first place, should the Dwayne Haskins Washington Football Team lose to the Seahawks in their 1 p.m, game, Big Blue will need to play a Déjà Blue game akin to their shocking upset of the Seahawks in Seattle.

The imperfect team will have to play the perfect game on Sunday night.

In the battle of rookie head coaches, Kevin Stefanski will be fielding an explosive offense driven more by its Nick Chubb-Kareem Hunt smashmouth assault than by Baker Mayfield, and Judge will not. And that’s with an Evan Engram (calf) who showed up as questionable on the Friday injury report.

There are questions for the Giants beyond the most pressing one at quarterback:

Are you a team resilient and tough enough mentally and physically to defend MetLife Stadium from a formidable team pushing to turn back the clock to a proud time in its franchise’s long-forgotten storied history? A team that last played a playoff game on Jan. 5, 2003? A team that hasn’t won a playoff game since Bill Belichick and Vinny Testaverde beat Bill Parcells and the Patriots on Jan. 1, 1995?

Are you the team that nobody will want to see in the playoffs should you win the NFC Least, or will this turn out to be one of those it-was-fun-while-it-lasted memories?

Can you remember how to be the team that slayed Russell Wilson and Pete Carroll, or are you the Not Ready for Prime Time Players no one expected to amount to anything this season?

The onus is on defensive coordinator Patrick Graham to figure out a way to keep the game from getting out of hand so McCoy is not forced to play catch-up. It will be McCoy’s job to manage the game rather than win it, and he will require help from his offensive line to open holes for Wayne Gallman and Alfred Morris.

“Freddie is going to step in and do a good job … we’ll be fine,” McCoy said Friday.

McCoy’s teammates love him. They profess their unwavering belief in him. New playcaller. Backup quarterback. For Giants fans forever drinking out of a half-full Big Blue glass, the hope against hope is Colt McCoy can somehow be Jeff Hostetler in Super Bowl XXV. Or Colt Dimes. More likely, Colt Nickels & Dimes.

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