PHILADELPHIA — It was around 1 p.m. on Friday afternoon when Josh McCown took his seat on the plane, his ribs still sore from the night before, the after-effects of a 300-pound Ravens defensive lineman walloping him to the turf.

McCown still completed the touchdown pass anyway, a perfectly-placed at the back of the end zone for Eagles tight end Alex Ellis. McCown is 40, though, so getting hit like that hurts a little more than it used to. Especially since he’d been retired for six months.

“It’s a subtle reminder," McCown said after the game, “that this is a little different than coaching high school football.”

Less than a week earlier, McCown was coaching practice more than 500 miles away at Myers Park High School in Charlotte. He officially retired in June, fresh off two productive years with the Jets and 17 years overall as a professional quarterback.

McCown was a full-time coach for the Mustangs when the Eagles came calling, desperate for a proven backup quarterback after Nate Sudfeld suffered a wrist injury.

He really was retired, though. Calls came in throughout the offseason from various teams, but McCown didn’t want to listen. There were only a few teams he’d even consider, and they had to meet his criteria.

He wanted to play for a contender with good organizational structure, a strong and respected coaching staff with a talented roster of players.

Another important factor: proximity to Charlotte. He wanted to be close to home, where his family lives, where he coaches.

Oh, and he wanted to keep coaching, too, though that wasn’t necessarily a requirement to sign him.

Anyway, he and the Eagles came to an understanding — McCown would be allowed to fly to Charlotte on Friday afternoon after practice, time permitting, and make it back in time to continue contributing as a coach for Myers Park on Friday nights. He’ll return promptly and won’t miss any team-required meetings, practices or any events.

The Eagles “understand the family dynamic,” McCown told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday. “The proximity to Charlotte was a factor, and part of why it made sense to sign here.”

That’s where McCown went after the preseason game against the Ravens last week, and it’ll continue this week after Thursday night’s game against the Jets, his old team.

Myers Park is blessed with a unique circumstance — an active NFL quarterback will be coaching them this season.

Most of the team watched their coach’s impressive performance against the Ravens last week, too, where he threw two nifty touchdown passes just five days after coming out of retirement.

When McCown walked into the Myers Park locker room the following evening, the players gave him a standing ovation. He blushed.

“It was in the moment,” said Mustangs quarterback Drake Maye. “We just all started clapping.”

McCown is 40 years old, now entering his 18th NFL season, playing for his 11th NFL team. He was the talk of Philadelphia after an unexpected preseason performance.

All he wanted to talk about was Olympic High School, Myers Park’s opponent that night.

In that moment, McCown only cared about coaching.

“I just wanted them to be focused on the game,” McCown told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday. “That’s the main thing. But I understand, I guess, the situation. To have someone that’s an active player in the NFL, working with, coaching you, that’s unique.

“I try to appreciate that," he continued, "but it was short-lived and I got the guys to focus on business as usual.”

‘He does all the dirty work’

Myers Park coach Scott Chadwick and his staff have to paint the field lines on every practice field before the team can workout. That can take a while.

More than two hours before a recent practice, before anyone else had arrived, McCown was out there, painting every line.

This is nothing new. McCown attends every meeting, game-planning session and practice. He works with the quarterbacks — two of them are his sons — on the field and off, and coaches up the receivers and rest of the offense, too.

Earlier in the summer, the team did a sleep-away, team-bonding trip outside of Charlotte. McCown was there, sleeping in the dorms like everybody else.

“He slept on this awful, awful dorm mattress we had to sleep on,” Chadwick said, laughing. “We were roommates and I don’t think either one of us slept more than two hours straight because the mattresses were so bad.”

McCown’s 6-foot-4, 220-pound frame hung off the bed. He never complained.

“He does everything that a regular high school coach does,” Chadwick said. “He doesn’t just show up, he does all the dirty work.”

One more: at the end of a practice as dark clouds loomed large in the distance, everyone on the team was running inside to beat the coming inclement weather.

Not McCown.

“It’s about to start raining,” said Muhsin Muhammad III, Myers Parks’ star wide receiver, "and Coach McCown is just out there picking up all the bags, picking up all the footballs.

“It’s just like, man, you gotta a freakin’ NFL quarterback out here messing around with little high school cats ... he’s just a great person.”

Chadwick says he’s had former NFL players on his staff before. The sons of NFL players line his roster.

None of the parents contribute quite like McCown, he said.

McCown is no helicopter parent.

He paints lines on the fields, collects footballs after practice, fills up water coolers and sleeps on too-small, uncomfortable matteresses because “it’s just the right thing to do, you know?" he said.

“I think that’s the way you go about it," McCown said. "All the different coaches have different things going on, and so you just try to get in and help as much as you can. Fields needed painting, it was my turn to paint them and so I painted them. It’s no different than any of the other coaches.”

“Obviously,” he added, “you want to set that standard so that you can hold your kids to the same one. Working hard, being prepared. That’s what we try to do every day at practice.”

Every day at practice with an NFL quarterback. Maye thinks about that sometimes and smiles. He’s not the only one. Even McCown acknowledges that this situation is unique.

He’s likely the only active NFL player who also is simultaneously helping coach high school football. In a different state, no less.

Look at it from Maye’s perspective: The Myers Park junior is already one of the top quarterback prospects in the country, committed to play at Alabama in 2021, and now he has the backup quarterback from a Super Bowl-contending NFL team coaching him up.

“He has bigger things to do, playing backup quarterback for the Eagles,” Maye said. “But he’s a great coach. It’s been a blessing."

Maye is one of four quarterbacks on the Myers Park roster; two others are Owen and Aiden McCown, Josh’s sons, a sophomore and freshman, respectively. McCown spends as much time one-on-one with Maye as his two sons.

For every practice this offseason, Maye had Josh McCown teaching him about general throwing technique, about coverages, receiver routes, different styles of defense, what to watch for on film and the importance of knowing where everyone is supposed to be. He pushed Maye to play faster — fast, not in a hurry, he told him — and how important it is to process information on the fly. He taught him how to be leader and “take ownership of the team” too, Maye said.

McCown has also helped come up with some plays that Myers Park runs on offense and he’s an active member of the coaching staff on the sidelines during games.

“He coaches me hard" during games, Maye said. “Every play, he has something to say.”

In Maye’s eyes, he has the “best quarterback coach in the country” showing him the ropes.

“I always ask him as many questions as I can,” Maye said. "What’s his favorite play? What’s it like in the league (NFL) when they blitz? What kind of blitzes do they bring? What do you see? What’s your favorite routes to throw against coverages?

“He’s just an awesome guy. Just watching film with him, extra film, extra work after practice, just sitting down with him talking football is fun to do ... having him coach me, it’s unreal.”

McCown works with the receivers, too, a group that includes Muhammad, the son of a former All-Pro receiver, headed to Texas A&M in 2020.

“The one word I can describe him with is: he’s a perfectionist,” Muhammad said. "It’s almost like he’s got OCD: everything is just on time. That’s the way the league works. There’s guys coming in dime a dozen and, it’s like, if you aren’t doing the little things better than the next guy, you get replaced.

“I like how he’s instilling that in us now.”

‘I think he’s got a couple more years in him’

McCown has been coaching under Chadwick intermittently since 2010, when the journeyman quarterback was bouncing in and out of the league.

Their relationship started when McCown was with the Carolina Panthers in 2009. That year, McCown won the backup quarterback job behind starter Jake Delhomme, but that was short-lived. In Week 1 — against the Eagles, no less — McCown replaced a struggling Delhomme, and quickly sprained both his left knee and foot on the same play. It ended his season. He never played another game for Carolina.

That’s when he started working for Chadwick.

McCown bounced in and out of Chadwick’s coaching staff for the next few years, spending anywhere from the offseason to the entire regular season before teams would come calling. In 2010, that was only the Hartford Colonials in the United Football League. In 2011 and 2012, Jay Cutler was injured during the high school playoffs and the Bears signed McCown to replace him.

“He went from being a high school coach,” Chadwick said, “to starting at Green Bay on Christmas night.”

He finally stuck around for a while after a stellar 2013 season in Chicago — with Eagles receiver Alshon Jeffery, too — bouncing between the Bears, Browns, Buccaneers and, finally, the Jets.

While with the Jets the last two years, McCown moved his family from Texas to Charlotte so his sons could play for Chadwick at Myers Park, one of the area’s top programs. After he decided to retire, McCown fully devoted himself to coaching and working on the side as an occasional ESPN analyst.

Even with those ESPN responsibilities, McCown didn’t miss a single practice, once even flying back from Bristol, Conn., in time to make it to the second half of a practice.

“This past Monday," Chadwick said, “was the first practice or workout he hasn’t been to since February.”

This was McCown’s new life, and he was perfectly fine with that.

“I just think I just like the opportunity to share knowledge,” McCown said. “These guys, they have dreams, they have hopes of playing good football and they just want the best snap to be a good snap. If you can come alongside them to share some things you learned along the way to try to help them play better, it’s rewarding not only for the player but for me as a person.”

There were some signs that McCown still had that NFL itch. He found a few ways to scratch it, but it was never really enough.

He stayed active away from the field, working out most mornings, playing basketball, staying active. McCown’s competitive desire sometimes would manifest when his quarterbacks — his two sons and Maye — would challenge him to throwing contests on the practice field.

The 40-year-old would usually win.

“I watched him throwing out there,” Maye said, “and knew he could still play. He still slings it around. He can still throw it better than any of us, that’s for sure.

“I think he’s got a couple more years in him.”

‘Like an old ’79 Chevy’

When Sudfeld broke his wrist in the preseason opener and was declared out, per reports, for six weeks, the Eagles started thinking about exploring veteran options in free agency. After Cody Kessler suffered a concussion the following week, the Eagles sped up the process.

So the Eagles, one of the few teams he was willing to consider, made their pitch to McCown, to come out of retirement and play (at least) one more season.

They met his demands, offered him a worthy contract — initial value of $2 million fully guaranteed, can be worth up to $5.4 million if incentives are met — and so he met with his family to decide whether he should seal the deal.

They said yes.

“They were excited,” McCown said. “They were like ‘you gotta go.’”

The rest of the team gave him the encouragement to go back, too.

“It surprised me a little bit that he went back but I support him 100 percent,” Maye said.

Added Muhammad: “It was actually a shock. I thought he was gonna be full time with us. But I was really just excited for him ... But I was just proud of how he presented it to the team, it was real professional and I can’t wait for his journey to continue and I look forward to seeing him win in the league.”

McCown signed on the dotted line on Saturday, and over the next few days spent extensive time with Pederson, Eagles offensive coordinator Mike Groh and especially quarterbacks coach Press Taylor learning as much of the playbook as he could before the Ravens game.

Together, he and Taylor highlighted the plays they were most comfortable running. It wasn’t a difficult conversation.

“Josh is pretty unique that way,” Groh said, “with the wealth of experience that he has, 18 years in the NFL, all the different systems that he’s played in. He’s had an opportunity to run probably just about every play there is or has ever been run or invented in football. He can draw on that experience.”

McCown entered in the second quarter against the Ravens and had to shake off some rust. On the first drive, McCown fumbled a snap and threw an incompletion. On the second, there were two incompletions and a three-and-out. On the third, he was sacked after two short completions ... another three-and-out.

On the fourth drive, he found his mojo on a sideline throw to wide receiver Greg Ward, a 15-yard completion that McCown said after the game got him going. That drive ended with a field goal. The next possession: a 20-yard touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone to J.J. Arcega-Whiteside.

Then, came McCown’s aforementioned touchdown pass to Ellis, completed in the face of imminent pass-rushing doom from he 300-pound Chris Wormley. That was McCown’s last play of the night. His final line: 17 of 24, 192 yards, two touchdowns, zero interceptions.

“It took me a little longer than I’d like,” he said after the game.

“It’s kind of like an old ’79 Chevy: it takes a while to get cranked up, and then you get going.”

Zack Rosenblatt may be reached at zrosenblatt@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ZackBlatt. Find NJ.com on Facebook.