After hearing that his son would make his first NFL start this weekend, Dallas Cowboys Senior VP of Sales and Marketing Greg McElroy Sr. told his namesake to embrace the moment.
"He's like, 'Hey enjoy this. You've been thinking about this since you were five-years-old. Since you could pick up a football and hold it in your right your hand — you've been thinking about this,'" McElroy told me on "Jets Talk LIVE" this week. "He said, 'Just enjoy it — don't make it too big. You have nothing to lose. Go out there and have a great time and enjoy your teammates and do the best you possibly can in order to represent Jets Nation in a positive way.'"
After leading the Jets to a Week 13 win over the Cardinals in a relief role, McElroy will take command of the Jets offense Sunday as the No. 1 Man.
"If you aren't nervous, then you're not comfortable," he said. "If you're not a little bit nervous, if you don't have that anxiety, if you don't have that moment of just feeling like I have to go out and do it — you need that pressure. And if you don't have that, I don't feel like I'd feel comfortable going into a game."
McElroy, who had a 27-3 starting record at Alabama while posting the highest pass completion percentage (66.3%) and lowest interception percentage (1.52) in school history, will set the bar high for himself.
"You set your own standard to how you want to play. You set your own standard to how you expect your team to play and things like that," he said. "Coach (Nick) Saban always preached that. It's not about the other team — it's about the standard you set for yourself and how you want to live up to that standard. That's always the most difficult thing. If your expectations for yourself are higher than the other expectations, then you can't go wrong."
