LeSean McCoy, the NFL's leading rusher, is a team player. So even though McCoy was disappointed to only carry the ball 10 times for 31 yards during Sunday's 38-20 loss to the New England Patriots, he's not complaining.
"I thought I would touch the ball a little bit more, just knowing about their defense, they're not really good against the run," McCoy said. The Patriots came into the game ranked 12th in rushing yards allowed per game and 19th in yards allowed per rush. "But I don't really ever judge the calls. We made some plays down the field early, so maybe that was the reason why. And then we kind of got down fast."
Indeed, the Eagles jumped out to a 10-0 lead thanks to a few completed deep passes when the Patriots defense appeared to be focused on halting the run. Then, less than 15 minutes of game action later, the Eagles were behind 21-10 and forced to play catch-up.
"It's really hard to talk about because as a competitor, obviously I want the ball, but it's a team thing, you have to spread the ball around," McCoy said. "We threw to ball to get them to back off the box because in the beginning of the game, we hit them deep because they were all in the box. And that's obviously to stop the run; we've been successful running the ball lately. Then I thought we would go back to it, run the ball a little bit just to test them out, see what we could do, but we got down a little bit, so maybe we had to throw the ball."
"We just have to execute the plays that are called," said left tackle Jason Peters. "If we had won, (the amount of rushing attempts) wouldn't even be a topic."
Next up for McCoy and the Eagles offense is a 4-7 Seattle Seahawks team that is surprisingly stout against the run. The Seahawks have allowed exactly 100 yards per game on the ground (eighth-best in the league) and only 3.5 yards per run, good for fourth in the league. Of course, the Eagles will only have a few days to prepare before they fly cross-country on Wednesday ahead of the Thursday night showdown.
"It's tough because we have a game Thursday night and we kind of need to win that game," McCoy said. "A loss like this, you kind of have to put in the back of your head. They're a good team. I don't think we showed up at all today so you watch tape, you correct the little things and you move past it. There's nothing you can do about it now and we know that we have to win the rest of our games to even have a chance of any playoffs. So that's the mindset."
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