Three-time All-Pro Gerald McCoy and two-time Super Bowl champ Kyle Van Noy discuss the practice of giving gifts to teammates during the holiday season – and how players also do what they can to help others in the organization and community who support their respective teams. Hear the full conversation on “McCoy & Van Noy” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
What did you do during your time during the holidays?
Did you guys do a secret Santa?
Did you guys do a gift giving quarterbacks?
That’s a huge topic right now.
Uh, quarterbacks, they post that on the internet of what they get O linemen.
I’m not a big fan of teams in the media knowing what the old linemen got and posting.
I think it’s kind of tacky.
That’s just me.
I feel like that should kind of be a private manner, but I get it.
At Christmas time for us.
Uh, we used to do a thing called McCoy Family Christmas where Patricia Diane Foundation was my, my foundation that I started.
My wife and I, and, uh, we used to, my wife, we were sitting up one day and we, she was like, you know what, I just wanna adopt some families for Christmas.
So it was kinda like.
Last minute whim, and we got 10 families.
It ended up growing to 75 families where we adopted these families and filling their Christmas wish lists.
Everybody got bikes, everybody, we tried to get as many uh gifts as we could on everybody’s wish list.
We got them groceries and all that.
And that was the McCoy family Christmas.
Yeah, we do Secret Santa with the Ravens for the D-line group.
I got him a drone.
I feel like it’s cool.
And then one of the brand new Apple watches that you can turn in and switch the wrists, they’re really cool.
So yeah, I think he’s gonna enjoy it and you know, I’ll show you guys what I got when I get back.
As a team, one thing the captains did.
is we made sure that the entire team put money in a pot for all of the workers in the building.
Whether it was, um, whether it was the janitorial staff, cafeteria, uh the training staff, everybody.
We made sure that everybody around, equipment, everybody around the building was Taking care of for Christmas.
I hope they still do it.
It was something I made mandatory while I was on the team and uh that was just, we just appreciate everybody around the building and we made sure that it was known that you guys are not just showing up and we just these, you know, these a holes are just playing football and don’t care what you guys are doing for us, so we always try to show appreciation.