LeSean McCoy ready to burst after Week 10 blip
The Philadelphia Eagles had issues running the ball against the Carolina Panthers, as star running back LeSean McCoy could only muster 19 yards on ten carries. It didn’t matter, though, since Mark Sanchez, Jordan Matthews, and the passing attack were sharp, while the defense harassed Cam Newton on just about every play in what was a thoroughly dominant performance on that side of the ball. McCoy’s poor outing was a flashback to his disappointing play in the first four weeks of the regular season, and it came on the same day Evan Mathis returned to the starting lineup and predictably started blasting fools in the running game.
Although Clay Matthews looked excellent at inside linebacker and could cause the Eagles some problems up the middle with his unique playmaking ability, McCoy and the running game look poised to eat against arguably the NFL’s worst run defense. The Packers have an elite offense and an underrated pass defense, but they allow a robust 4.6 yards per carry. I actually don’t think they have the worst run defense in the league, but they will most likely be dominated by a talented RB like Mark Ingram, Marshawn Lynch, Chris Ivory, or, in their first meeting, Matt Forte.
McCoy is probably better than all of those guys (yes, even Lynch, but that’s based on last season’s play and comes with the caveat that he has much better blocking), and he looked like his old self in the three games prior to his poor outing against the Panthers. With 149 rushing yards against the New York Giants and another 100-yard performance against the Houston Texans two weeks later, Shady looked like the elite back he truly is, and I view last week’s 1.7 YPC outing as an anomaly.
At the beginning of the season when Mathis and Jason Kelce went down, McCoy struggled, but it clearly wasn’t his fault. The league’s finest offensive line was immediately crippled and became a subpar unit, but they did bounce back a bit once Lane Johnson came back and some sort of cohesion was re-built. That cohesion will be fully in place in the near future, as the Eagles are only now starting to re-integrate Mathis and Kelce back into things. Those are two of the best run blockers in the NFL and, in my view, the best players at the guard and center positions, respectively.
He was already on the upswing before the returns of Kelce and Mathis, but the fact that both players are back and have a game under their belts to shake off the rust (two in Kelce’s case) means that McCoy looks poised to put up numbers similar to last season’s output. 1,600 rushing yards, 5.1 yards per carry, and an average of 100 yards per game are numbers that jump off the page, and that’s the sort of efficiency that the Eagles have been missing without their elite blockers. With those guys back in the fold, the Eagles running game should reach unstoppable levels again, because even though defenses know it’s coming, it’s so difficult to stop top-notch blockers and an elite back who can break ankles at will.
The Packers defense has plenty of positives such as the cornerbacks, rookie safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, and the pass rushing depth, but their run defense sticks out as a significant negative. That said, they may have turned the corner last week with Matthews utilized inside, because they did a great job of containing Forte, who thrashed them earlier this year but could only muster 54 yards on 17 carries in the Sunday Night Football romp. I’m not sure we’ll see Matthews inside as often as last week, but I do think he’ll get some snaps there. Given the team’s lack of talent at ILB and impressive depth at OLB, kicking Matthews inside seems to be a fruitful endeavor, especially when going up against someone like LeSean McCoy, who can flat-out embarrass inferior defenders.