AUSTIN, Texas — There are several words to describe Colt McCoy: Focused. Confident. Selfless. Perfectionist.
Those are all characteristics that go into the making of a great leader, but of those qualities, McCoy's quest for perfection separates the Longhorns quarterback from lesser players.
It's also the quality that worries his coaches.
They love his fire, but they're concerned about how his harshest critic will grade his performances as the season wears on. That critic happens to wear jersey No. 12 for the Texas Longhorns.
"I wouldn't trade him for anyone," coach Mack Brown said. "He's putting too much pressure on himself, trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders."
McCoy's goal is to lead Texas to the BCS national championship game in Pasadena, but he would be doing himself a big favor if he stopped and smelled the roses on the way to the Rose Bowl.
In other words: Take it easy, kid. You're doing a good job.
Colt is the head of the longhorn, and he embraces the chance to get this team back in a national title game. We asked him about Texas Tech's last-second win in Lubbock last fall. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "They got us." Translation: We got beat. And we're moving on.
He's not one to dwell in the past. Ask him about the sluggish starts that the offense has had in the first two games and he'll stress eliminating mental mistakes and finishing plays.
McCoy is the perfect quarterback to lead a team to a national championship, but he may have to ease up on himself. Brown met with his star for one hour the past week and reminded McCoy that it's OK to have fun while you're winning football games.
And while that isn't quite Brown's "We left him alone" explanation for Vince Young's rapid improvement his last season here, it makes sense because McCoy has a healthy obsession with winning.
I asked offensive coordinator Greg Davis if he thought McCoy was placing too much pressure on himself.
"Probably, and I don't know that he knows it," Davis said. "He wants so hard to do well and he's trying to be perfect. In both games he settled down and played well in the second half. And it's not like he doesn't have good numbers."
Davis has a point, because McCoy's numbers through two games are solid. He's completed 51 of 76 passes for 654 yards — 150 more yards than he had through the first two games of the 2008 season — with five touchdowns and two interceptions.
Last year, he completed 76 percent of his passes through the first two games, which ranked somewhere above the ozone layer, and had seven touchdowns with one pick. So what's the big problem this season?
Not a problem. Just a perfectionist quarterback at the helm of a program that expects nothing short of a championship.
Having been around McCoy for some years now, it's clear that he has set his standards high, and while I believe him to be as good of a player as anybody in college football, those high standards could hurt him in the end if he doesn't whistle while he works.
McCoy doesn't do a great job of hiding his dry sense of humor, but a little laughter won't hurt, especially if things go as expected over these next 10 weeks. Maybe his coaches' words are starting to sink in.
"We're going into this game just like any other game," he said. "We just want to go out and have some fun."
And win the game.
It's OK to do both.
Cedric Golden writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: cgolden(at)statesman.com.