ESPN’s Jason McCourty Talks Aaron Donald, Kyler, Mahomes & More with Rich

Rich wanted to know how long the show's new Is He Back Yet segment has left to live. Jason McCourty gave him an answer, and then gave him something better: a walkthrough of exactly what Aaron Donald is weighing right now.

"If he's smart, it'll be another 3 weeks," McCourty told Rich. "Wait for training camp to be completely over, then come back." But McCourty does not think that is how Donald operates. If Donald is playing this season, he is going to want camp, he is going to want to get hit, he is going to want preseason snaps. "Aaron Donald's not coming back to just be an okay player." Even on reduced playing time, the expectation is the same impact he had two years ago.

The harder part is not physical. "To not play football for 2 years, you have to consciously decide that I want to go back to being punched in the face every single play that I'm out there on the field," McCourty said. Yes, the Rams jersey and lining up next to Myles Garrett and another shot at a ring is awesome. The question is whether you want the process that gets you there. McCourty knows his own answer. Two years removed from his own retirement, he is good. He does not want any parts of it.

Rich pushed him for teams nobody is discussing at the outset of August, and McCourty went to Jacksonville first. Liam Coen has been telling his guys that motivation is easy right now, because you can flip to any channel or any website and find nobody talking about a team that won 13 games and its division with a brand new head coach. Trevor Lawrence played extremely well in year one of that system. If he takes another step, and the defense takes another step, McCourty wants to know where that leaves Jacksonville in an AFC he considers more open than the NFC.

His NFC answer was New Orleans. Taysom Hill's finish to last season, Chris Olave getting paid, a receiver added in the draft, Travis Etienne in the backfield, and a defense under Brandon Staley that McCourty said was absolutely rolling by the end of the year. Everyone is focused on Baker Mayfield's contract in Tampa. McCourty thinks that division is anybody's.

Kansas City is where his heart and his head split. His heart says Patrick Mahomes is healthy and this team contends. His head sees a six-win team that added Kenneth Walker III and drafted defense but never added another outside weapon, on an offense that has lacked explosiveness since Tyreek Hill left. McCourty pointed to Mahomes's air yards sliding from around eight to six and change over that span, and to the knee brace.

"This is also Mahomes with a chunky knee brace on who's going to play differently early on in the season because he has to," McCourty said. He is not picking the Chiefs over Denver in that division right now.

New England he does like, calling them the prove everybody wrong team. A.J. Brown gives Drake Maye a true number one on the outside in year two under Josh McDaniels. Elijah Vera-Tucker and Caleb Lomu shore up the line. That secondary is back. The schedule gets harder, though, and the job changes. "They go from being the hunters to the hunted," McCourty said.

On Minnesota, he came down on Kyler Murray over J.J. McCarthy, and not gently. Rich defended McCarthy by noting that nine was banged up last season. McCourty pounced on the shorthand.

"You got to do a little bit more for us to just refer to you as nine," he said. "In Buffalo, they refer to their quarterback as 17. I'm okay with that. He's done quite a bit. But right now, J.J. is just J.J."

The complication he named is real. McCarthy knows the system after two years, so he is likely to look better in camp reps. There is also the other J.J., Justin Jefferson, who spent a full season watching whoever was under center struggle to get him the ball. Murray is there for a reason. Carson Wentz is there for a reason. If Minnesota believed in McCarthy that much, McCourty said, the quarterback room would not look like this.