At the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' mini-camp last week, TV cameras caught Jameis Winston drawing defensive tackle Gerald McCoy offside and Bucs defensive line coach Brenston Buckner subsequently tearing into McCoy for said penalty. The camera is too far away to pick up what Buckner is saying, but we know enough to glean it wasn't pleasant.
McCoy was asked about it Friday and waved his hands at the entire non-troversy. "It's coaching," McCoy said. "That's what he gets paid to do. He's been given an assignment, and he's going to do his assignment to the best of his ability. I'm a 30-year-old man with five kids. I've been paying my own bills since I was in college. You think a grown man yelling at me phases me? He's coaching. "Hear the message, not the tone. Y'all made a big deal, 'Oh, well, he's yelling at Gerald!' Duh. That's what he's supposed to do... You know what the reality is? If I don't jump offsides, that doesn't happen."
McCoy is the very definition of Grown Man. He was USA Today's Defensive Player of the Year at Oklahoma City's Southeast High School in 2005, earned two All-American nods at Oklahoma, was the No. 3 overall selection by Tampa Bay in the 2010 draft and has since earned three First Team All-Pro selections while playing in six consecutive Pro Bowls. There's a high chance McCoy will one day join the small fraternity of players to live in the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame.
So, yeah, nothing's going to phase him at this point of his career.
And, yes, coaching a made man like McCoy is different than, say, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, but on a base level at some point every coach is going to have to get in a player's face with the volume cranked up. That's what makes football different than AP biology.
McCoy's answer taught an important lesson to two groups of people:
1) To media: Yes, yelling is sometimes part of professional football.
2) To younger players: If I, a 30-year-old future Hall of Famer, am not above tough coaching, neither are you. Get used to it.