I don't think anybody was more skeptical of Rolando McClain than I was when the Dallas Cowboys signed him this offseason. After he threw away opportunities in both Oakland (I mean, who could blame him) and then Baltimore (dude, WTF?!), I didn't think he would stick around for very long because it appeared he was dealing with some coronary issues. Hard to play in the NFL if you either have no heart or the heart you do have just isn't into it.
Hoss of the Week: Rolando McClain
Retired NFL defensive end Stephen White has some hardware to hand out. This week, a certain Dallas Cowboys linebacker everyone wrote off gets the coveted Hoss of the Week award.
Ronald Martinez
Little bits of positive news kept coming out of Cowboys training camp about McClain's performance. Interested observers claimed he might actually end up pushing for the starting job at middle linebacker with Sean Lee out for the year. It didn't seem plausible to me for awhile. Like, how can a dude who literally quit twice all of a sudden be pushing for a starting job? He quit, bruh. QUIT!
Quitters aren’t the kind of dudes who normally make the most of second chances, nevermind third chances. And yet the buzz continued to build as the dog days of training camp trudged along.
As skeptical as I was this year, there was nobody who was higher on McClain than I was when he came out of Alabama as a first-round pick in 2010. It's also why I gave him absolutely zero shot of gutting it out and making the team, let alone starting. When I see a guy with all the physical tools come from the program he came from, get drafted that high and then just walk away from it all after a bunch of dumbass arrests and without anything resembling a legitimate reason why, it pisses me off. To see him basically con the Ravens into signing him only to quit a few weeks later ... again? Infuriating!
Regardless of my feelings on the issue, this kid was indeed back to playing pretty well from what I could see in the preseason. As it turns out, the Cowboys were impressed enough to name him the starter at middle linebacker. That’s cool and all, but he has been a starter before and we all know how that turned out, right?
I watched his film last week in the Cowboys' first game against the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers put it on the Cowboys right from the start, so the score was out of hand damn near the whole game. That made me even more curious to see how he would play knowing that they were going to take an "L" and there wasn't much he could do about it.
He ended up making eight total tackles, which is pretty good, I guess. But that wasn't what impressed me about his play last week. What impressed me was a play he made near the end of second quarter with the score already 21-3. Wasn't anything spectacular about the play, per se. Frank Gore ran what was basically a lead ISO to the offense's right. McClain came unblocked from the backside A gap, met Gore just behind the line of scrimmage and took him down pretty damn hard.
Good play for sure. What made this play stand out to me, however, was McClain’s reaction. He got up and let out a guttural scream, and then kind of just walked back to the huddle smiling. I’m sure some fans might have taken it as him showboating or something, but I don’t/didn’t think that was it.
I’ve screamed many times like that on a football field before, and it was also after big hits. Laying the wood to somebody on the field of play feels almost indescribable. I would liken it to really getting all of a baseball with your bat where the hit is so perfect, you almost don’t even feel it. I can promise you that there is nothing in the world like that feeling, especially if you really like knocking the shit out of people. That scream that I saw him do? That scream comes from deep within you; it’s not planned, you can’t fake it. That kinda scream comes from ... your heart.
So yeah, that play pretty much forced me to allow for the fact that maybe McClain had once again found his love for the game. Then watching him ball against the Tennessee Titans on Sunday? Oh, there can be no doubt -- this kid is back.
Not only is he out there making plays, it’s evident that he is having fun doing it. He’s stuffing the stat sheet again, too. Seven tackles, a sack and one of the most athletic interceptions you will ever see a linebacker make. Hell, they ruled the interception an incompletion at first or else he might have run it all the way back. I was pretty sure the ball hit the ground, too, at first, but nope, he somehow stuck his arm under the tipped pass in mid-air having just changed directions from dropping back to leaping forward.
I don’t know what made McClain quit previously. I don’t know what gave him the motivation to come back now and put his all into the game again. All I do know is that I selfishly hope he continues to find that motivation to give the game everything he’s got, because he’s so fun to watch when he does.
I also wish he could lend his fellow Cowboys linebacker Bruce Carter some of that motivation, but I know that would be asking too much.
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