Unable to recover from neck injury, Colt McCoy placed on injured reserve

Colt McCoy had taken four steps up a staircase at Redskins Park on Tuesday afternoon when he stopped. He had a quarterbacks meeting to attend in seven minutes, and as he saw reporters approaching the bottom of the staircase, he turned to a team spokesman, who cautioned McCoy that he may be late.

“I need to give them some answers,” McCoy said.

And so McCoy descended the stairs, strolled a half-dozen steps into the locker room across the hall and spoke for nearly five minutes about a reality he had hoped frequently over the past two days he would not have to face.

His season is over.

McCoy was placed on injured reserve by the Washington Redskins on Tuesday, with constant examinations Sunday night and Monday unable to show any immediate remedy for the pinched nerve in his neck.

That means the Redskins will head into their final two games of the season — Saturday against Philadelphia, and Dec. 28 against Dallas — with Robert Griffin III as their quarterback and Kirk Cousins as his backup.

“I’m just frustrated that I’m not gonna be able to finish the season out with my teammates and finish strong, like our goal is,” McCoy said. “I felt like we had them right where we wanted them last week, and it’s just unfortunate. It’s almost hard for me to talk about, just because I know what good things were coming.”

McCoy began the season as the Redskins’ third-string quarterback, signed in April to a one-year contract as insurance should Cousins be traded. When he wasn’t, McCoy stuck around as a backup, seeing his first action on Oct. 19 when he replaced Cousins at the start of the second half of a game against Tennessee.

He started the next game, Oct. 26 at Dallas, and led the Redskins to an overtime victory against a team that had won six of its first seven games. It was back to the bench for McCoy on Nov. 2 when Griffin returned from a dislocated left ankle, but following three poor performances, the Redskins turned back to McCoy, giving him the starting role for the final five games of the season.

McCoy didn’t even make it through two, as a sack by St. Louis defensive end Robert Quinn late in the game against the Rams on Dec. 7 led to the pinched nerve and bulging disk in McCoy’s neck. He visited several doctors and specialists over the following week and was medically cleared to play, but lasted just a dozen snaps on Sunday in a game against the New York Giants before being replaced by Griffin.

“They pretty much shut it down for me,” McCoy said, referring to the medical staff he met with on Monday. “I would have kept trying to go, but I’ve got to be smart about that.”

Coach Jay Gruden has asked McCoy, who has been told merely to rest his neck and shoulder, to remain around Redskins Park and help with the offense. How long McCoy stays with the Redskins will be seen in March, when his contract expires and he again becomes a free agent.

That’s something McCoy said Tuesday he hasn’t thought about.

“I do feel comfortable here,” McCoy said. “I know that Jay and Sean [McVay, the offensive coordinator] and I see eye-to-eye on a whole lot of things. We see the field the same way, and you know, I felt like there was a lot of positive things ahead for me.”