'"Oh, it crushed me early on," McDermott said. "It crushed me from the standpoint of, I looked introspectively, just looked at myself and said, 'What did I do wrong?' I didn't place any blame, no. It was, 'What did I do wrong?' I feel like that period of my career, that period of my life, had I not gone through that, I don't know if I would be here now. What I mean by that is, my whole career had been going like this every year. You guys see the resume. Every year was going like that. What I learned from that is, the game is more than just X's and O's. It's more than just scheme. That to me, as I've said over the years, that setback was a setup really for a comeback for myself and the mental toughness part of life."'