LeSean McCoy was the best football player on the field at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum yesterday in the Buffalo Bills’ win over the Rams.
He totaled 150 yards on 18 carries. His last attempt of the day went for a three-yard loss when the Bills were running out the clock.
His long rush of the afternoon was 53 yards, and it happened on a wonderfully blocked play. Take away those two runs, and McCoy toted the rock 16 times for 100 yards, which equates to a hefty 6.25 yards-per-carry average.
So exactly how good as McCoy been with the Bills, especially compared to the rest of his career?
Shady scored 44 rushing touchdowns in 90 games with Philadelphia and has just six rushing scores in 17 career games with Buffalo, therefore he was clearly more productive from a TD standpoint with the Eagles than he’s been with the Bills thus far.
His 8.33 yards-per-carry average against the Rams in Week 5 was the second-highest YPC average of his career and the highest since 2010 when he averaged 9.31 yards on 16 carries against the Cowboys on December 12 of that year.
Here’s a look at McCoy’s streaks of 100-plus yards-from-scrimmage games:
- Four-straight games in 2010
- Three-straight games in 2011
- Four-straight games in 2011
- Five-straight games in 2012
- Three-straight games in 2013
- Seven-straight games in 2013
- Three-straight games in 2014
- Seven-straight games in 2015
- Three-straight games in 2016
Those final two bullet points mean McCoy has gone over 100 yards from scrimmage in 10 of 17 games in a Bills uniform, including 10 of the last 13 outings.
With Buffalo, McCoy currently averages 4.65 yards per carry, which is slightly better than the 4.64 yards-per-carry clip he had during his six-year stint in with the Eagles.
When the Bills traded for McCoy in 2015, he was a soon-to-be 27-year-old running back with just under 1,500 career NFL carries and was fresh off a 312-carry, 1,319-yard season on an underwhelming Eagles’ team.
Days after the trade went through, Buffalo and McCoy agreed to a five-year, $40.05 million contract that included $18.25 in full guarantees, a deal that was criticized by many, especially given the reduced importance of running backs for the majority of teams in the modern-day NFL.
While Buffalo hasn’t been ashamed nor afraid of deploying a run-heavy attack with McCoy as the feature back, the star runner has only hit the 20-carry mark on three occasions with the Bills and hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.
To me, McCoy is the most naturally talented and refined running back Buffalo has had since Thurman Thomas and has certainly been worth every penny.