Colt McCoy's day starts with a handshake from a president. George H.W. Bush seeks out the former University of Texas quarterback hero on the field before Browns-Texans, wraps him up in a shake — one Texan to another.

It turns out that McCoy should have asked for a presidential pardon. From the Houston Texans. From a defense that threatens to break him in two before his day is done.

Surely, Bush Sr. would grant it. For this is a clear case of cruel and unusual punishment. The long-time Lone Star State golden boy doesn't just suffer at the hands of Wade Phillips' defense. He probably feels that Texas quarterback magic getting crushed out of him with every hit.

And there are a lot of them — hits from all angles, hits delivered just as he throws the football, hits that send him bouncing off Reliant Stadium's removable grass, hits he never sees coming and hits where he only can brace himself and pray his chin strap is buckled tight. Hits, hits and more hits.

"The first snap to the last," McCoy says simply when asked about the Texans' pressure after it is over. McCoy stands at an interview podium in the bowels of Reliant as he delivers those words. He's lost another pro football game, this time 30-12 to a superior team. And it's something of a miracle, he's still in one piece.

If Colt McCoy ever wondered what it was like to be the quarterback at Rice — or one of those other smaller schools UT ran over — as he threw all those pretty touchdown passes and won more college football games than any other quarterback in NCAA history ... well, he doesn't have to imagine it anymore. McCoy is living the horror of the perpetually beaten down.

He's the scrawny kid getting punked now.

McCoy tries to conjure up some happy memories at that podium. He brings how he won a Big 12 Championship in Reliant, mentions how he once beat Rice here too, talks about how happy he is to be back in Texas.

But the media isn't interested in that ancient history on this NFL Sunday. Instead, McCoy finds himself reliving his greatest hits. Or more accurately, the Texan defense's greatest hits and his greatest pains.

Colt, what about that pass to Greg Little? Did you see him make the catch?

"No," McCoy pauses. "No, I didn't."

They might as well ask McCoy if he'd ever seen Martians during any of his visits to Texas Tech. That would have been more likely than him seeing any bit of that Little catch. For McCoy gets absolutely leveled on the play — arguably his best throw of the day. Texans rookie linebacker Brooks Reed drops him like a dump truck running over a bicycle as he releases the football.

It's wonder, the Browns quarterback does not melt right into the grass.

"I felt that one pretty good," McCoy says. "He got me. I got the breath knocked out of me. He got me."

The Texans didn't just get McCoy. They tested his manhood. The sometime pretty boy passes with flying colors. He stands in there to take every shot, waits until the last possible moment to throw the football again and again and again. Knowing he's going to get Crash Test Dummy creamed.

At one point, crazed Texans linebacker Brian Cushing dances over McCoy as he lies prone on the field, his white Browns No. 12 jersey splattered with Reliant grass. And McCoy swears that wasn't even one of the worst hits.

McCoy doesn't let up when the game's out of reach. That throw to Little — the one where Reed threatens to rearrange his internal organs, how about we switch your spleen and your stomach? — comes in the fourth quarter with the Browns trailing 30-6. It'd be only human nature for McCoy to have happy feet at that moment.

A man can only take so much before his survival instinct kicks in. Right? Right?

"McCoy stayed in there pretty well," Texans nose tackle Shaun Cody says. "But I don't think he wants to play our defense again."

You can doubt a lot of things about Colt McCoy as an NFL quarterback. But you cannot question his toughness. Not after this game. Not ever again.

Which doesn't mean he'll ever make it as an impact player in the pros.

The guy who almost couldn't lose at UT (McCoy went 45-8 for the Longhorns) now carries a 5-11 record as an NFL starter. He's thrown 15 touchdowns and 14 interceptions in those 16 games. His quarterback rating is 76.4 this season after it was 74.5 last season.

McCoy's still as NFL quarterback short (6-foot-1) and relatively slight (215 pounds) as ever, still dogged by all the questions that made him nothing more than a third-round draft pick to begin with. So far no one sees the next Drew Brees, another Texas-reared quarterback who's become a 6-foot QB superstar. They certainly don't see another Tom Brady, a late-round pick turned all-time great.

"His performance like the rest of our guys, needs to be better," first-year Cleveland coach Pat Shurmur says of McCoy, his quarterback — for now.

A Healthy Fear

If you want to be honest about it, no quarterback wants to play the Wade Warriors of the Texans defense right now. It still sounds funny to say. This is the Texans' defense we're talking about. But that doesn't make it any less true.

The CBS cameras catch Colt's parents — Brad and Debra McCoy — wincing and sometimes turning away in the Reliant stands as their 25-year-old son takes hit after hit after hit. But the Mama and Papa McCoy aren't alone in their aversion to staring too long at Phillips' defense.

The Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl regular quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had one of his worst — and most painful — games of the season against these Texans. Roethlisberger's quarterback rating was lower than McCoy's on a day when the Longhorn throws for a mere 146 yards. And, Roethlisberger left Reliant in a walking boot.

No one's comparing them to the '85 Bears, but it's time to accept that these Texans are getting awfully effective at making life miserable for opposing quarterbacks.

"I think we've done a pretty good job of it all year," Cushing says. "I can remember certain games. The Pittsburgh game, I thought we were hitting Roethlisberger a lot. Miami, the first game against Kerry Collins (and the Indianapolis Colts). This team has just been aggressive and we've had fun doing it."

Cushing's fun includes a cheap-shot head butt from Browns right guard Shawn Lauvao, who unloads on a helmet-less Cushing after a McCoy interception. It leaves Cushing with blood squirting from his face — again. And getting a kick out of it — again.

"Most of them are just laughing at me, just looking at me," Cushing, a new defensive captain (just voted in by his teammates on Wednesday), says of how the other Texans react to his blood works. "I think they like it. They kind of get fired up by it."

It's a safe bet that Bush Sr. wouldn't have nearly as much to talk about with Cushing as he does McCoy in the pregame. Cush is a little too wild for the prez. Bush is there to call the pregame coin toss.

Little does McCoy know then that he's the one who is destined to spend the whole afternoon getting flipped upside down.

"They beat us up," Browns wide receiver Josh Cribbs says. "They beat us up."