Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Gerald McCoy jealous of Jameis Winston? Just the opposite actually

Published Jan. 13, 2016 12:23 p.m. ET

foxsports

While there was a bit of speculation out early on that Pro Bowl defensive tackle Gerald McCoy was actually jealous of rookie quarterback Jameis Winston and all of the attention he was getting.

Fortunately for the Buccaneers and their two biggest leaders, McCoy immediately put that to bed, and instead gave only rave reviews of Winston.

Via Scott Reynolds of Pewter Report:

“I don’t want to draw attention to myself at all, but what I do want is clarity,” McCoy said. “I didn’t want anyone to think I was jealous of my own teammate. That’s not going to happen. I love my teammates and I want them to be as great as they can be. The better my teammates are the better the team is, so why would someone be jealous of getting publicity and having success?

McCoy continued on by stating that he had already said that he knew the face of the franchise would be shifting to Winston.

“I said in the offseason that this face of the franchise would be shifted to Jameis,” McCoy said. “Now we just want him to enjoy being a rookie, but once the face comes, once it’s his team, there is a lot that comes with it. I’ve said this in an interview at the podium. For people to say that I’m jealous, I’ve already said it’s going to shift. I believed it and I said it early because I knew how successful this kid was going to be. I don’t get jealous. There is no point in being jealous.”

McCoy even took to Twitter to make sure that it was known there was no issue between the two players.

So we can now put that one to bed, and go back to instead focusing on the Buccaneers as they work through the process of a head coaching search and building on a solid improvement from 2014 to 2015.

Jeff Smith writes about the NFL for FOX Sports. You can find him on Twitter @JSM8ith.