Yahoo Sports’ Draft Live crew examine why Tennessee cornerback Jermod McCoy is falling further down the 2026 NFL Draft.
We were talking earlier about Jerod McCoy and the slip.
What can you tell us?
What’s happening right now?
Yeah, you know, this is really interesting because on Monday when I was sending out texts and just, you know, to different teams kind of asking them, “What are you hearing?”
Like, what’s sort of the, the buzzy thing that’s going on?
You heard that McCoy could really slip in this draft.
And, and I, I guess I did not quantify it that I thought he could slip completely out of the first two rounds, but I, as I started to talk to teams about exactly what the problem was here, and this news has come out that, it’s, it’s not the ACL tear issue.
Like, that’s fine.
but he has a bone plug, which was basically a piece of bone and cartilage was used to repair a degenerative cartilage issue, in that same knee, and now there is a thought process amongst doctors, that this is gonna now have to be replaced a- again.
M- maybe not immediately, but at some point, in the future.
And I had one team tell me that, you know, if there’s a severe slip, it’s because there are some teams that are taking the position that if this next surgery, which would likely knock him out for the entirety of a year, if this next surgery is not successful, it will effectively end his career.
Because what you’re doing to fix it is you’re taking a piece of bone and cartilage from somewhere else in that knee that is not necessarily load-bearing, and you’re transporting it, to try and fix the defect.
That sounds so painful.
So you can’t keep doing this over and over again.
This sounds horrible.
Yeah.
It’s not good.
It’s- very serious.
Oh, man.
You’re shaking your seat.
Yeah.
It’s like it kept getting worse, too.
Bone and cartilage.
Yeah.
I mean- And a tendon in there too.
It’s, it’s- It’s a guttural reaction from all of us here, Rob.
Yeah.
It’s a And, and one other, piece of information.
Sorry.
I’ve got, I got people texting me still about the, the tight ends that were drafted at the end of the second.
the interesting thing here too is the, the kind of the foremost surgeon now who deals with these bone plugs, it’s, it’s Dan Cooper, who’s the Cowboys’ team doctor.
So if, if somehow you see the Cowboys end up being the team that does the dice roll on it, it’s because they have the foremost expert on their staff, is the one that, that has really successfully handled a, a number of these, these bone plug, surgeries.
But it, yeah, I mean, it’s really serious.
Bone plug.
Anytime a, a team looks at a player of that magnitude, despite the talent, and hears, “This next surgery’s gotta resolve it.
you can’t keep doing this, and that might be where you call it a career,” that’s why he falls out of the first two rounds, I think.