Gerald McCoy and Joe Cullen aren’t happy about laziness report

Update: A previous version failed to credit Pewter Report for Joe Cullen's quote due to a massive oversight.

When ESPN’s Vaughn McClure reported that Gerald McCoy wasn’t always the hardest worker last year, I bet he didn’t expect it to blow up the way it has, given that it was an aside in a quick paragraph about Lovie Smith’s firing. But blown up it has, and Gerald McCoy isn’t happy — and neither is Joe Cullen, the defensive line coach who coached McCoy for the past two years. Mark Cook of Pewter Report talked to Cullen, and he had some choice words for McClure.

"You tell him to tell his source to put his name on it," an animated Cullen said. "That is total BS. Gerald worked his ass off. I’ve coached some good ones around the league but no one worked harder than Gerald. He was limited at times because of injury but no one in that building worked harder. You can put MY name on that as a source. Total BS. Tell that guy he can call me."

Cullen has a slight reason to lie here — defending his players will always look good to other NFL players — but that’s not particularly likely. More likely is that McClure was relying on a different source who saw different things, someone who wasn’t as close to McCoy as Cullen was. This is the first inkling we’ve had since his rookie year that McCoy might not be working his hardest, so I’m siding with Cullen and McCoy here.