LeSean McCoy knows that he's having a historic season for the Eagles. He's already set the franchise record for total touchdowns and rushing touchdowns in a season and he trails Wilbert Montgomery's franchise record for rushing yards in a season by 238 yards. But McCoy, the emerging star, wants to make sure that the men who pave the way for his production receive the attention they deserve.
"It works like that all the time, the skilled player gets all the glory and all the attention," said McCoy, "but it starts up front. I just want to make those guys feel appreciated as much as possible. Those guys block so well for me and, in the beginning of the season, they took so much heat and then when everybody kind of relaxed and watched them play, they did well. So I think each chance I get to congratulate them, I try to do that as much as possible."
As a team, the Eagles are averaging 5.18 yards per carry, the second-best mark in the league behind only the Minnesota Vikings. As a team, the Eagles are on pace to rush for 2,395 yards, which would best last season's 2,324 as the best rushing mark of Andy Reid's tenure with the Eagles. While McCoy has been superlative and those numbers have been augmented by Michael Vick's rushing ability, the offensive line should get plenty of credit.
McCoy "is a special back and you always take pride when your running back is having a great season like Shady is," said starting center Jason Kelce. "Part of it that he wouldn't be able to do it without us, but I don't know if we would have as many rushing yards in our starting running back as we do if it wasn't LeSean McCoy. So it goes hand-in-hand. It's fun blocking for him."
Of course, that rushing production hasn't resulted in an overwhelming amount of wins for the 6-8 Eagles. Still, there is hope left for the team as they remain alive in the division-title hunt, needing to close out the season with two more wins and hope for outside help. While it's not the situation the team would like to be in, McCoy says the team is happy to still have a chance.
"It is tough because we know what type of team we have here and in this position we're in, the only people we can blame is ourselves as a team," he said. "So it's hard to really dwell on it and look back in the past to a couple games we should have won, but we have to move forward. We need a little help but we can take care of what we can handle and then just win games."
