Greatest Eagles' Back of All Time?

Okay, we know what most of you are thinking right away when you hear this.

“Duce Staley!” 

“Ricky Watters, obviously.”      

            

 “Rod ‘HeHateMe’ Smart!”

And while all of these are absolutely phenomenal guesses, none of them are correct. There are only a few names that can really be in this conversation: Wilbert Montgomery, Brian Westbrook and… Lesean McCoy. Now we know that it might be a little early to throw McCoy’s name out there, but his stats so far have been eye popping to say the least. So let’s analyze the early careers of these three players just to give you an idea of just how good Shady can be.

In Wilbert Montgomery’s first two full seasons as the Philadelphia Eagles’ starting running back, he racked up 2,732 rush yards on 597 attempts for an Yds/carry avg of 4.6. On top of that he added 75 catches for 698 yards and between running and receiving he had 24 TDs. As you can see, he had a promising start and obviously finished with a pretty impressive NFL career overall.

The next guy to take a look at would be a young Brian Westbrook. Brian’s first two full seasons as an Eagles’ starting runningback came in 2003 and 2004 where he had only 294 carries for 1,492 yards an average of 4.9 yards/carry. But let’s not forget, this is in the midst of the Andy Reid West Coast offense so his receiving numbers are really what make him stand out from the pack. In those first two years, Westbrook caught the ball 110 times for 1,035 yards and in total had 20 TDs. The receiving numbers for those two years were ridiculous. He had so many screens and flares thrown his way that those plays were basically running plays anyway that he may have turned from nothing into something. Being alive during the Westbrook era, we also remember the amount of excitement he put into each and every Eagles’ game no matter when he touched the ball. This is a true sign of one of the greatest runningbacks in a teams’ history.

Finally, we take a look at the early career of Lesean “Shady” McCoy, who by the way, after only 2 cumulative seasons in the NFL is already 16^th on the Eagles’ all-time leading rushers. Now in order to make this work, we had to take the cumulative of two seasons with Shady which means 4 games in 2009 that he started while Westbrook was hurt, so bear with the numbers a bit. In almost two full seasons (in the Andy Reid pass happy offense) he has had 467 carries for 2286 yards which is a solid 4.9 yds/attempt. His receiving numbers in that time span show 139 receptions for 1023 yards. He also has 21 total TDs in that time span as well. So as you can see, his game is not far off of the other two Eagles’ legends. Plus, Merrill Reese says his name really cool so that has to put him up there amongst the elites as well. At this point, proclaiming him as one of the all-time great Eagles’ runningbacks isn’t wrong it’s just a little premature at this point considering he still has a long career ahead of him, but he is still young. Shady still has a large amount of growing and maturing to do and as long as he can stay healthy, he is going to end up being not only one of the greatest Eagles’ runningbacks of all time, but maybe just maybe one of the greatest Eagles’ players ever.

Take it away, Merrill...

Good luck not getting goosebumps...

Final thought: 

For those of you still saying Rod ‘HeHateMe’ Smart, you have passed the test that was the correct answer all along. He is indeed the greatest Eagles runningback of all time no matter what the stats or uneducated fans will lead you to believe. Keep strong and one day, Rod and you will get the recognition you all deserve.