Philadelphia Eagles: Leonard Fournette’s deal is bad news for LeSean McCoy

Maybe LeSean McCoy should have signed with the Philadelphia Eagles after all.

When Philadelphia Eagles all-time leading rusher LeSean McCoy signed a one-year, $1.05 million deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it felt like the best possible outcome for an aging back looking for one last shot at NFL gold.

After finally earning a Super Bowl ring two years after his hometown(ish) team accomplished the feat in 2019, McCoy, in theory, could have retired happy at the tender age of 32, transitioning to a promising career in real estate with his jersey all but guaranteed a spot in the rafters of the Linc for the rest of time, and his case for Canton strengthened considerably. But if you know McCoy like fans in the City of Brotherly Love surely do, you know spending the biggest game of his career in street clothes as a gameday inactive isn’t the way Shady wanted to go out.

With McCoy reporting his body still feels good, and a self-proclaimed desire to play two more seasons on a very legitimate quest to become on the 17th player in NFL history to rush for 12,000 yards over a career, the 53rd overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft turned his eyes to the free agent market for a fleeting chance to find a role where he can average 465 yards a season in a complementary role.

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Or, McCoy could sign a bare-bones, vet minimum deal to join the Buccaneers in Tampa Bay with a legitimate chance to compete for a starting role once more.

*sigh* Shady always has had a flair for the dramatic.

Initially mixed into the fray with incumbent starter Ronald Jones II and 2020 third-round pick Ke’Shawn Vaughn, McCoy rapidly became a fixture of Bruce Arians’ first-team offense, where his pass-catching abilities made him fast friends with short-yardage specialist Tom Brady. Assuming everything remained copasetic, McCoy looked like a legitimate Comeback Player of the Year candidate, with a chance to become every bit as potent as James White back in New England.

But then, it happened.

Seemingly out of the blue, the Jacksonville Jaguars opted to waive incumbent starting running back Leonard Fournette less than a fortnight (two weeks) before opening day, sending a legitimate shockwave through the NFL world as we internet types know it. If you’d drafted Fournette in the second round of your fantasy football league, you cursed the names of David Caldwell and his predecessor, Tom Coughlin. If you instead opted for a player like McCoy over Fournette, you likely made fun of said doofus for their ill-advised general managership, knowing full well you landed a flex steal a few rounds later.

Welp, I hope you, said hypothetical fantasy football player, enjoyed your superiority while it lasted, as McCoy’s backfield just added the fourth overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft on a one-year, $2 million deal to steal Shady’s job once he’d already gone home for the day.

Now, for those uninitiated, Arians’ offense isn’t exactly running back focused. Relying principally on a slew of aggressive, vertical passing concepts that stress the creases of even the stoutest defensive secondary, Arians’ rushers have routinely found success on the ground thanks to an ability to contribute as receivers coming out of the backfield. From Andre Ellington, to David Johnson, Ronald Jones, and even a single season of solid play from Chris ‘CJ2K’ Johnson, Arians’ teams very rarely utilize a traditional one-cut power rusher, instead maintaining a fairly consistent 60-40 pass-to-run ratio with an average of 100 targets going to running backs.

Despite his pedigree as a power back, Fournette was targeted 100 times as a receiver himself last season, hauling in 76 percent of his passes for 522 yards and 23 first downs.

Factor in Brady’s comfortability with truckers like LeGarrette Blount helping to take the ball out of his hands 17 odd times a game and the 25-year-old St. Augustine native could rapidly find another warm-weather home without having to so much as change his license plate number.

And as for Shady McCoy? Well, he’s probably not going to be waived by the Buccaneers any time soon, at least according to Mike Florio, but it’s hard to imagine McCoy’s role with the team being even close to as expansive as he initially expected when he took a haircut off the top for a chance to compete for a featured role. At best, McCoy now looks like a third-down back for the Buccaneers, where his ability to block/run/catch gives Brady a reliable outlet pass half a dozen yards down the field.

At this point in his football lifespan, LeSean McCoy is playing on house money. He’s one of the most dominant running backs of his era, a six-time 1,000-yard rusher, and a legend in his (and sort of my) hometown. If his career ended today, McCoy would be welcomed back to Lincoln Financial Field by Jeffrey Lurie and the Philadelphia Eagles with open arms and maybe even a nice mural for good measure. Whether he earns 1,000 all-purpose yards or 100 this fall, that’s not going to change anytime soon.