LeSean McCoy’s Breakout & Ronnie Brown’s Disappearance

The last two weeks have been a disaster for the Philadelphia Eagles. Yes, the two losses are worrisome, but the biggest issue for this team is the injury risk commonly known as Michael Vick. In back-to-back weeks, Vick has been banged around and tossed around in the backfield on nearly every play. Because of this, he has already been through his fair share of injuries in just three weeks of play.

With Vick’s status being unknown as of this moment after head coach Andy Reid declared that Vick isn’t necessarily ruled out for next week’s game against the San Francisco 49ers, the passing attack takes a huge hit and will certainly suffer a setback in production.

However, the Eagles are blessed to have one of the most elusive and talented running backs in the league: LeSean McCoy.

Against the New York Giants, McCoy picked up the slack on offense, amassing 128 yards on the ground with one touchdown. As it stands now, McCoy leads the NFC in rushing yards and touchdowns and is second behind Oakland’s Darren McFadden in yards.

Now that Vick could possibly be out for an extended amount of time — even if he does return, there’s a good chance he will get banged up again — the Eagles’ offensive scale could finally be favoring the running game, something that is rarely seen under Reid.

Unfortunately, though, with a sub-par offensive line and an offensive scheme that is designed around the athleticism of Vick, DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin, the likelihood of the Eagles pounding the rock up the middle is not very good.

“The Eagles will have to try to run the ball more with [Mike] Kafka at quarterback. The problem is that their running scheme is just not designed for lining up in the I-formation and handing off 20 times per game. They will still be getting McCoy the ball on shotgun sweeps and the like,” said Football Outsiders Senior Writer and New York Times contributor, Mike Tanier.

Without Vick, though, McCoy will be targeted more by opposing defenses.

“The loss of [Mike] Vick is a huge problem for the running game because he opens so much up, both as a deep passer and a bootleg option. You saw the Eagles compensate last week by faking the DeSean Jackson reverse a few times. That has the same effect: it stops backside pursuit. You can only do that so many times,” said Tanier.

In the offseason, the Eagles made a late signing when Ronnie Brown decided to take less money to come to Philadelphia. The addition of Brown seemed to be the answer to the age-long search of the prototypical short-yardage back. Up to this point, though, the Eagles have sparingly used Brown and have failed to use him on short yardage situations.

Instead, the Birds turned to Owen Schmitt multiple times on the goal line. That all but failed. The use of Brown (or lack there of) is a real issue of mine. I understand that this offense is very explosive, but when the ball is in the red zone, specifically on the goal line, the whole “high speed, big threat” gameplan needs to be thrown out the window and replaced with hard-nosed, power football (i.e Ronnie Brown).

“As for [Ronnie] Brown, with Shady playing well I assumed he would have limited opportunities, but I was shocked to see Dion Lewis getting a carry or two, because I would not trust a rookie against the Giants defense if I had the option, and while I like his potential as a quick back, he offers nothing in the passing game that Brown does not offer more of,” said Tanier. “And of course, I cannot understand the goal line strategy at all, and I would think Brown could be a good option in those situations. Better than Owen Schmitt of course.”