In the McCown family football portrait, one arm stands out.
It belongs not to the two quarterbacks who spent a combined 31 seasons in the NFL. Or to their older brother who called signals for Texas A&M. Or to second generation quarterbacks at Lamar University and East Texas Baptist University.
No, the one arm unlike all others belongs to Owen McCown, the lone lefthander in the photo.
The first time dad saw Owen throw, Josh McCown did a double take. Wait. What? We have a Steve Young in the family?
Almost 20 years before taking his first snap for UTSA, Owen McCown began tossing balls at home. Then a backup quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals, Josh McCown recognized an advanced delivery.
“The way he throws the ball now is with the same motion as when he was 4 or 5 years old,” said the elder McCown, now the Minnesota Vikings’ quarterbacks coach. ”He’s always been a real natural thrower.”
Owen may not be the best thrower. Or the most accurate passer. Or the quarterback with the highest ceiling in the family.
He might never play a down in the NFL. But he’s got grit and resilience to go with a strong passing gene, and he’s used them to become one of the nation’s top Group of Six (G6) quarterbacks.
Now about Young: There weren’t many left-handed NFL quarterbacks when Josh was playing for SMU in the late 1990s. There were only a few when he arrived as a rookie in 2002.
The one who stood out from that era was Young, the three-time Super Bowl champion who retired in 1999 and became the first left-handed quarterback in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
When Josh saw Owen throw as a kid, Young came to mind. Not because the father envisioned his son as an All-Pro. But because left-handers were anomalies and Young was the best-known example.
A family of athletes
Josh did not set out to raise quarterbacks. He encouraged Owen and his younger son, Aiden, to play basketball and baseball. He refused to let them play tackle football until middle school. But dad recognized the sport of destiny early on.
When Josh came home from football practice, Owen and Aiden begged him to throw to them. They didn’t want to toss the ball with dad. They wanted to compete, one-on-one, running after their father’s passes.
“They’d go out and cover each other,” Josh said. “I’m surprised one of them didn’t become a DB (defensive back) and the other a receiver.”
In middle school, Owen established himself as a two-way football player. “I was a pretty good receiver and I would play occasionally at safety,” he said. “I wasn’t good enough to play quarterback yet. Other kids were ahead of me. They were more developed. My dad would tell my brother and I, ‘You don’t have to play quarterback.’”
The quarterback gene was impossible to ignore.
The father saw it when Owen threw a baseball from centerfield to home plate.
He saw it when Owen faked a short inbounds pass to Aiden and launched a perfectly thrown basketball to his brother, sprinting downcourt.
“You see things at different levels,” Josh said. “In AAU basketball it’s passing and understanding people and space and the ability to anticipate.”
Owen transitioned to quarterback the summer before his freshman year of high school in North Carolina. He made varsity for some games and deepened a bond with his father.
In 2019, Josh came out of retirement to sign with the Philadelphia Eagles. The contract granted him unusual flexibility as a backup quarterback. He flew back and forth between NFL games and high school games.
As ESPN reported in August 2019, “The Eagles’ practice schedule combined with the close proximity to Charlotte allows McCown to hop on a plane and head home Friday and make it back to Philadelphia for Saturday meetings. That means he can be on the sideline for Myers Park High School games on Friday nights, as was the case this past week, one day after throwing a pair of touchdowns in an exhibition game against the Baltimore Ravens. He received a standing ovation when he walked into the Myers Park locker room.”
As a sophomore the following season, Owen backed up a junior who became the third pick in the 2024 NFL draft and led the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl, Drake Maye.
Transition to Texas
After the McCowns moved to East Texas, where Josh grew up, Owen led Rusk High School to the playoffs as a junior. The relocation proved fortuitous. COVID-19 cost Maye his entire senior year of football. The pandemic cost Owen the playoffs.
As the family grew, the father held football drills, a passing camp of sorts, in the sweltering East Texas summer. Owen, Aiden and their cousins worked on their game not because Josh wanted them to but because they asked him to.
“They chose to work out,” Josh said.
Mechanics improved. Relationships tightened. Distant echoes stirred. Decades earlier, Josh and his brothers Luke and Randy McCown played high school quarterback in the piney woods of nearby Jacksonville.
Each became Division I prospects under the tutelage of a coach who’d wind up at UTSA.
After graduating from Rusk, Owen enrolled at Colorado only to step into a circle-of-life moment. He transferred in 2022 to play for the man who coached his father and two uncles in East Texas, Jeff Traylor.
The McCown DNA sparked optimism at UTSA. Josh played 18 seasons in the NFL, Luke parts of 13. Randy started two seasons at Texas A&M and led the Aggies to the Big 12 championship game. What would Owen do? He arrived to back up Frank Harris only to lose that role, briefly, his first season.
“That was my big hit of adversity on Day One,” Owen said.
He regained the backup spot, appeared in seven games and got his first start in the Frisco Bowl, leading the Roadrunners to a 35-17 victory over Marshall.
Three years later, he’s climbing through the Roadrunner record book. Owen ranks second among school leaders in passing yards (7,420) and passing touchdowns (63) and has won three bowl games.
At 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, he does not possess great size or boast a rocket arm. He tracks as a fringe pro prospect.
He is, however, exactly what UTSA needs him to be. A competitor who can play through injuries (bone fracture and hernia) and overcome adversity. A clutch quarterback who can deliver under pressure. A leader who can win big games.
Consider what he did on Sept. 12:
Trailing I-35 rival Texas State 26-24 on the road with 4:31 left in the fourth quarter, Owen led the Roadrunners downfield. He converted two fourth downs, one an 8-yard pass to David Amador II, the other a 6-yard keeper up the middle, on a drive that ended with Brandon High Jr.’s 25-yard, game-winning touchdown run.
“That’s two of the grittiest plays you’ll ever see,” Traylor said. “That kid’s carried a lot. He started every game last year and he was injured in 11 of the 13. That kid worked his tail off for that.”
The following night, father and son exchanged video clips from the Roadrunner and Vikings games, as they always do on Sunday.
One play, in particular, drew the father’s attention: Owen lowered his shoulder and barreled over a defender to pick up a first down on fourth down. To paraphrase, dad: All those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Owen ate to gain weight finally paid off.
“It’s just to have fun,” Josh said. “He’s got really good coaches down there. I don’t want to supersede what they’re saying to him.”
No. 1-ranked Texas presented a different challenge on Saturday. The Longhorns defense pressured Owen out of the pocket, sacked him once and forced him to make poor throws. Against a defense loaded with NFL prospects, he completed 14 of 23 passes for 70 yards and one interception. The Roadrunners fell, 30-6.
“He didn’t have a chance,” Traylor said.
Next up for Owen McCown and UTSA is Colorado State, followed by Rice and South Florida.
The schedule brims with promise. Just like that little boy who began throwing some 20 years ago.
“I remember him playing with various balls as a toddler,” Josh said. I remember him throwing everything left-handed all the time. We just went with it.”
Now look at that family portrait: Brother Aiden McCown is slinging balls at Lamar University. Cousin Ryan McCown is throwing at East Texas Baptist University. A couple of cousins are passing for their high school teams.
The McCown family football tree is growing, every quarterback gripping a ball with his right hand.
Except for the one kid who throws with his left.
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.
