NFL players had plenty of time on their hands during the NFL Lockout. Colt McCoy chose to spend much of his time wisely - organizing team workouts with Cleveland Browns players for instance. With no way to talk to coaches about the new offense being installed by head coach Pat Shurmur, McCoy figured he would go to the next best person - Brett Favre, who ran the offense for over a decade as the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers and Mike Holmgren.
McCoy called Favre and got much more than he expected, according to NFL.com.
"He said, 'Yeah, come down tonight,' " McCoy said he recalled Favre saying. "That didn't happen."
What did happen is a trip to Mississippi to meet with Favre, going over the intricacies of the Wesst Coast offense that Favre ran so well for so many years.
"He's an outstanding guy, and I learned a lot," McCoy said, "so I was thankful for him being open to me even coming down there. It's the first time we had met. It was a lot of fun."
The Browns need McCoy to grab ahold of the offense as quickly as possible, especially with the NFL Lockout keeping players and team apart for all of the off-season. If the Browns are going to have success in 2011, McCoy needs to know the offense, and fast.
"He helped me on some things," McCoy said. "I had the playbook and I had some tape. But you can go down and ask him, 'OK, vs. this, what call do you make here? And you see a pressure, what call can you make to adjust?' Those are the things that we talked about. Same things I would ask a coach. But now that I'm here, and with coaches every day, we're way past that."
Needless to say, McCoy's new head coach is pleased that his young quarterback would go out of his way to learn the new offense.
"I just think that speaks to what Colt is," Shurmur said. "He puts two and two together. In an offense where you had a player that was tremendously successful, he took it upon himself to go see him, and I think that's great. I've got a lot of respect for Brett. I consider him a friend of sorts."
If McCoy's performance in the Browns' 27-17 win over the Packers is any indication, the visit to Mississippi was well worth it!