EAGLEMANIACAL.com

LESEAN McCoy’s next contract could be one of the smartest moves this team could make for the next decade. He doesn’t want to make less money, and that is totally understandable. Raise your hand if you’re eager to do what you did last year, again this year, for less money than you were promised…  

I didn’t think so. It’s just not who we are. And surprise, surprise, McCoy seems to be a lot like the rest of us in that regard.

Considering that McCoy’s 312 rushes in 2014 were 3 times more than the combined 103 by back-ups Darren Sproles and Chris Polk, it’s hard to say he doesn’t deserve what he was promised. He held up his end of the deal, why fuck him over now? Especially given the Eagles options to replace him with either what’s on the roster, what’s in Free Agency, or what’s in the Draft (provided that Kelly doesn’t chip this Draft up as well).

If your boss worked you three times harder than your next 2 co-workers, you probably wouldn’t want to give anything back either. For his part he’s willing to restructure, but not take less money. However, that term “less money” has a lot of room for interpretation.

Currently McCoy is only guaranteed 1M$ of his 9.75M$ 2015 salary, and 3.4M$ in a prorated signing bonus. He could get cut and walk away from football for 2015 and the Eagles would still be on the hook to him for 4.4M.  So the market for his services is between 4.4M (to sit on his couch and eat Cheerios from a large Tupperware bowl) and 11.9M (to remain an Eagle and finish in the top 5 in rushing again). If we cut him, other teams could steal him for something between those two figures. Remember in October when I mentioned him being a giant in 2015? People laughed when I said that. Not so much laughter out there now. Here’s another one: How do you think we’d do if we had to cover Dez Bryant AND load the box for Shady?

His contract calls for about 28M$ over the next three years. My guess is he’ll want some of that non-guaranteed money converted into guaranteed money. This is almost too easy to do. For example: A deal worth 25M$ over 4years, with say…17M guaranteed. (In 2005 Brian Westbrook got 25 over 5, so adjusted for inflation this deal would be almost stealing, and both sides would get a substantial win.) McCoy would be much more affordable for the Eagles over the long term, and there would be about 5M$ in cap space made, with a stabilized cap figure to boot. Similar to what happened with Jason Peters last year.

It would mean that the Eagles would be assume the risk of being stuck with him if he became less effective due to his 208 pound body being damaged from being over-practiced and then over-worked in games. It would also mean that McCoy wouldn’t get to test the open market and maybe score a bigger deal from a more desperate team. Both sides would get something, but both sides would have to give something up to do the deal.

Of course if both sides can’t work something out, expect to see stories start to surface about how Shady isn’t a “team guy”. Stories of how he’s only out for himself, and how we need to remove this cancer from the locker room. All of course built on information from sources who will never be named. There’ll be quotes from Kelly about how no one player is bigger than the system. Then we’ll hear about how the next man has to step up. Jerseys will be burned and the word ‘traitor’ will be thrown around. You know the drill.

So it’s simple, 25M$ over 4 years with 17M$ guaranteed. That deal would work for everybody. For my part, I’m thinking this should be LeSean McCoy’s next contract.