INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Evan Williams didn’t care that Xavier McKinney was still conducting a postgame interview at the locker beside his inside the visiting locker room at SoFi Stadium.
“Best in the league!” the rookie safety Williams yelled about the veteran McKinney. It’s what first-year defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley said on Thursday back in Green Bay, too, that McKinney was the NFL’s best safety.
The Packers signed McKinney to a four-year, $67 million contract in free agency after the 2020 second-round pick spent the first four years of his career with the Giants. That deal, which makes McKinney the fourth-highest-paid safety in the NFL, already looks like a bargain. In the Packers’ 24-19 win over the Rams on Sunday, McKinney intercepted his fifth pass in five games this season. One in each game to start his Packers tenure.
No player in league history since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger has ever intercepted a pass in each of his first five games with a new team. It’s still far too early for Defensive Player of the Year discussions, but McKinney will force his way into them if he keeps this up. No safety has won the award since the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu in 2010.
If someone had told McKinney before the season that he would have a pick in each of the first five games, would he have thought they were crazy?
“Nah. I wouldn’t have thought you was crazy at all,” McKinney said, dead serious. “I went into the season — I’m on a mission and that mission doesn’t stop until we played our last game. Everything that I didn’t get before, that’s what I’m coming for.”
Xavier McKinney has an INT in each game this season after today’s of Matthew Stafford.
“I got a good break and I made a play on the ball.” pic.twitter.com/luWMHNNAql
— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) October 7, 2024
Head coach Matt LaFleur has coached in the NFL for 16 seasons and seems in awe of what he’s watching from the 25-year-old.
“I don’t want to jinx it,” LaFleur said postgame. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The guy just has a knack for the football and he’s got great ball skills. He’s very instinctive and smart to allow him to anticipate, to make plays and then he generally makes the play.”
McKinney makes it look easy, whether it was the immense ground he covered to pick off Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts on a lofted ball down the middle in Week 1, the way he stuck with Vikings running back Aaron Jones on a corner route out of the backfield for another interception to prevent a touchdown last Sunday or the several passes that have seemed to fall right into McKinney’s arms while he’s waiting over the top of someone else’s tight coverage.
That’s what happened on Sunday when Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford floated a ball deep down the left side for wide receiver Tutu Atwell on what looked to be a skinny corner route. Defensive linemen Karl Brooks and Colby Wooden ran a stunt up front and Brooks was in Stafford’s face as he threw. With cornerback Keisean Nixon glued to Atwell, McKinney came over the top for an easy grab before returning it 28 yards to the Packers’ 46-yard line, setting up a touchdown drive that put the Packers up two scores after they trailed by three at halftime.
“I saw his eyes,” McKinney said. “I was able to get a really good break on it. Yeah, he looked me off a couple times throughout the game. It was difficult. It was probably the most looked-off I’ve been this year. So it was difficult, but I know if I trust it, my craft and my instincts, I was gonna be able to get one.”
Making what McKinney is doing appear so effortless requires meticulous film study preceding games. Defensive backs coach Ryan Downard said earlier in the week that McKinney texts him each week to ask when he can get his hands on tape of the upcoming quarterback he’s playing. It requires intelligence and anticipation before the snap and athleticism and instincts after it. Then, of course, comes making a play on the ball, which he has done flawlessly — almost. McKinney had what would’ve been his sixth interception this season bounce off his hands and said postgame that he wouldn’t celebrate his interceptions with cameras and microphones in his face because he knows he left one out there.
Even if McKinney should have six interceptions instead of five, he has still been the difference-maker and then some that the Packers hoped they were getting back in March. Teammates and coaches have raved about McKinney both off the field and on, where everything he does inside the walls of 1265 Lombardi Ave. is materializing between the white lines in the form of one of the best defensive players in the league.
“Man, it’s unbelievable,” cornerback Eric Stokes said. “Five picks, five games. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that. That’s Madden stuff that I do. It’s unbelievable.”
“Being out there with him, it’s just like watching greatness,” Williams said. “It’s pretty remarkable, the consistency at which he does it, but it’s not really a surprise … just in the way he prepares and just gets ready for the game, his mental preparation. If you know him, you know it’s not really a surprise that he’s going out and putting up these numbers every week.”
“He just erases everything back there,” defensive tackle Kenny Clark said. “When they throw the ball deep or wherever it’s at, we expect him to come down with it.”
5️⃣ straight games with an interception for Xavier McKinney!! An unreal start in GB for 5th-year safety.
📺: #GBvsLAR on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO8ZBqG pic.twitter.com/I9sIlUdd9B— NFL (@NFL) October 6, 2024
McKinney is the Packers’ best safety since Nick Collins, who might’ve made the Pro Football Hall of Fame had he not suffered a career-altering neck injury more than a decade ago. The mentoring of Green Bay’s three rookie safeties has been valuable — McKinney once said he watches film in between practice and meetings so he can give the likes of Williams, Javon Bullard and Kitan Oladapo tips ahead of time.
But it’s the bone-crunching yet legal hit on Atwell to break up a pass and force a punt on the Rams’ opening drive, the fumble recovery with the Rams driving that led to a go-ahead third-quarter touchdown drive and his game-shifting interception that served as the best examples of why McKinney is such a crucial asset for Hafley and a Packers defense that already has nine interceptions after picking off only seven passes all last season.
McKinney said recently that he feels disrespected when quarterbacks test him deep. As much as the Packers will stick up for their own, they’re probably fine with each quarterback remaining on the schedule disrespecting McKinney if he continues shoving it right back in their face.
There’s no way McKinney can keep this pace up, right? The odds are against him, but you would’ve said that after each of the last couple of games, too. Even if he doesn’t finish the season with a pick in each game, it’s clear that McKinney is the playmaker in the deep middle of Green Bay’s defense that the franchise has needed for so long.
“I always had pretty good instincts and pretty good ball skills,” McKinney said. “I pride myself on that, just playing safety and especially playing deep part of the field. That makes a good safety a great one, being able to play in the center field and be able to make those plays, so I’m just trying to keep continuing to do that.”
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(Top photo: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
