He leads all NFC running backs in yards, touchdowns from the running back position and 100-yard performances. Adrian Peterson? Nope. Steven Jackson? Michael Turner? Guess again. None of those usual suspects. Those striking statistics belong to LeSean McCoy, who is, so far, putting together one of the best seasons of any running back in Eagles history.
While the third-year running back was chosen by many experts as a potential darkhorse candidate to make the Pro Bowl this season, McCoy would tell you that he should have made it last year, when he posted 1,672 yards from scrimmage on top of nine total touchdowns. This season, McCoy is blowing those numbers away, having already racked up 692 yards from scrimmage and eight touchdowns through just six games.
This season, the 23-year-old is on pace for 1,517 rushing yards on 280 rushing attempts, an average of 5.4 yards-per-carry. He is also in line to catch 56 balls for 328 yards on his way to 1,845 yards from scrimmage, which would make him just the fourth Eagles to ever gain more than 1,750 such yards in a season.
The 208-pound rusher is also on his way to 16 rushing touchdowns and five receiving touchdowns if he maintains pace; his 21 touchdowns would be the most by any Eagle in club history, beating out Hall of Famer Steve Van Buren's 18 in 1945. Oh, and amid some team-wide ball security issues, the player affectionately referred by his teammates as "Shady" hasn't committed a fumble since Week 4 of the 2010 season.
Despite his dominance through the first third of the NFL season, McCoy believes that he's still "a work in progress."
"There are not a lot of backs in this league playing as well as LeSean is right now," said head coach Andy Reid. "He has a lot of value as a blocker and as a receiver and you can obviously see how good of a runner he is when he has the ball in his hands."
McCoy was drafted in the second round in 2009, largely due to his slight build and presumed inability to serve as a team's workhorse back. He has used his doubters as motivation, looking to make his mark as one of the NFL's most consistent feature backs.
McCoy has already begun to win over analysts and coaches around the league. Football Outsiders, a reputable independent advanced statistics website, ranks McCoy as the NFL's most efficient running back by a wide margin, one spot ahead of the league's leader in rushing yards Fred Jackson. Perhaps most impressively, Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan, considered by many to be the NFL's premier running back guru, called McCoy "the best back in pro football."
The former Bishop McDevitt HS standout is one of just four running backs this season to attempt at least 28 rushes in a single game, which he did Sunday in a 20-13 victory over the Redskins. He leads the NFL with 45 total first downs, rushing for first downs on a league-best 34.3 percent of his carries.
McCoy heads an Eagles rushing attack that ranks first in the NFL, averaging 170 yards on the ground per week. If he can continue at this pace, the 23-year-old would be just the 14th player in NFL history under the age of 24 to hit the a 1,500 rushing-yard milestone, putting him in the company of Barry Sanders, Edgerrin James, Steven Jackson, Jim Brown, Walter Payton, and Eric Dickerson. At this rate, McCoy, too, could become a household name.
