ENGLEWOOD, Colo — Mike McGlinchey knows these are not Cousin Matt’s Detroit Lions.
Cousin Matt is Matt Ryan, who during his 15-year NFL career mostly as an Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback was 5-2 lifetime against woebegone Lions, completing 71 percent of his passes and posting a 103.4 passer rating that was his third-best among NFL teams.
Ryan is now retired to the NFL broadcast booth while his kid cousin, the 6-foot-8, 315-pound McGlinchey, is playing right tackle for a 7-6 Denver Broncos team that plays the 9-4 Lions this Saturday night at Detroit’s Ford Field.
The difference between the Lions for the better part of the past 65 years and now?
“The belief that they have in each other,’’ McGlinchey said in an interview with 9NEWS this week for the Broncos Huddle. “And you can feel that on the tape when you watch these guys play. They’re built right. They’re built physical, they’re built strong. And they all buy into what their brand of ball is. They run the ball well, they have a great offensive line, they make plays in play-action and they have playmakers all over the place on offense.
“And then their defense flies around and gets to the ball at all times. They have a lot of talent on that side of the ball as well. They have a good pressure rate of getting to the quarterback, so they’re a complete football team. And they’ve earned the confidence that they have, starting with last year and the run they went on at the end of the year and it kind of catapulted them into becoming contenders this year.
“It’s going to be a huge challenge for us on Saturday night but one that we believe we’re ready for and one we’ve been building to have.”
The McGlincheys and Ryans grew up in Philadelphia as close family friends. Matt is 10 years older than Mike.
“We’d have summers together down at the Jersey Shore in Wildwoods, New Jersey,’’ McGlinchey said. “Was close to his brothers and his sister and my aunt and uncle, my aunt Bernie and my uncle Mike.
“Matt was my football hero my whole life. I was very lucky to have a family member accomplish what he accomplished, but Matt always did it the right way. And I think the coolest thing, I always watched him from afar but I was able to share a couple coaches with him over the last five years. (Kyle) Shanahan and those guys, he won the MVP for those guys (in 2016 for Atlanta) and the first thing they say about him is not how good of a player he was, it was how tough he was, how competitive he was. How much of a leader he was. And those are the things that my 10-year-old self feels good about for following the right guy.”
After McGlinchey played his college ball at Notre Dame and first five NFL seasons for the San Francisco 49ers, he became a free agent at a perfect time, as the peak of his career matched with a $17.5 million a year contract. After protecting mostly pocket passers in San Francisco, McGlinchey was challenged with pass blocking for the scrambling Russell Wilson in Denver.
Most people think its easier blocking for a mobile quarterback but it tends to be the opposite. Mobile quarterbacks tend to get sacked more often because they hang on to the ball a second or two longer than pocket throwers. Wilson has been sacked 38 times this year, more than anyone but the relatively inexperienced Sam Howell, Bryce Young and Zach Wilson.
Russell Wilson has been sacked an astounding 520 times in his 12-year career, an average of 43.3 per season. By comparison, the immobile, pocket-passing Tom Brady was sacked an average of 24.6 times in his 23 seasons. Peyton Manning took an average of just 17.8 sacks in his 17 seasons.
So Wilson’s off-script scrambling ability can be a blessing and a curse.
“Sometimes his creativity, and his legs -- I was told a long time ago, and I can’t believe I never thought of it, offensive line is the only position in sports where you’re back’s to the ball,’’ McGlinchey said. “So I don’t know where he is back there and a lot of steps are predicated on predetermining that spot.
“But when plays break down, Russ has made a whole career of the spontaneous nature of the way he plays. Certainly the good outweighs the bad, for sure.”
Since joining the Broncos, McGlinchey has been accountable through the good times and the bad. When the Broncos started 0-3 with a 70-20 loss to the Miami Dolphins in game 3, and 1-5 with an embarrassing home loss to Nathaniel Hackett and the New York Jets in game 6, McGlinchey stood tall at his locker and answered all questions. As one of the team captains, McGlinchey offered reassurance better days would come.
They have. The Broncos have won six of their last seven heading to Detroit.
“I don’t know if I predicted the future or anything, but you have to be confident,’’ McGlinchey said. “You can’t operate in this game without that and certainly you can’t operate without belief that it’s going to be better. I was in a lot of different situations my first five years of my career and we won a lot of different ways.
“But for all the success San Francisco’s had, there was also some struggle in there, too. The postseason runs have clouded the struggles of getting there. There’s only one year we were the 1 seed when we got in. Every other year we had to battle to get in. We were a 6 seed one year, a 2 seed another year. There’s so many ways to get into the dance, you’ve just got to get there. And you just stay the course over a 17-week season and you come out better than you were the week before.”
> Watch 9NEWS original shows, live Colorado news and weather updates, daily forecasts, and sports coverage for free on the 9NEWS+ app on Roku and Fire TV.
SUGGESTED VIDEOS: Sports
9NEWS+ has multiple live daily shows including 9NEWS Mornings, Next with Kyle Clark and 9NEWS+ Daily, an original streaming program. 9NEWS+ is where you can watch live breaking news, weather updates, and press conferences. You can also replay recent newscasts and find videos on demand of our top stories, local politics, investigations and Colorado specific features.
To download 9NEWS+ on Roku search for KUSA.
To download 9NEWS+ on Fire TV search for 9NEWS.
