Eagles trade Shady McCoy to Buffalo Bills

Just heard this on the wire...

Massive player-for-player swaps in the NFL are rare, but Tuesday's deal between the Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles would certainly count as massive.

According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, the Eagles will trade running back LeSean McCoy to the Buffalo Bills for linebacker Kiko Alonso. Alonso played for Eagles coach Chip Kelly at the University of Oregon.

Multiple outlets confirmed Schefter's report.

The trade will end the Eagles career of McCoy, one of the franchise's biggest stars the last few years. McCoy was a two-time first-team All-Pro, but his numbers took a huge dip last year and there was speculation he wouldn't return in 2015. McCoy had 2,146 yards from scrimmage in 2013, but just 1,474 last year. His average dropped nearly a yard per carry too, from 5.1 to 4.2.

The move is just as interesting from the Buffalo side. New coach Rex Ryan likes to run the football, but he also likes difference makers on defense. That's what Alonso looked like during a fantastic rookie season. He had 159 tackles in 2013 and was a huge playmaker for the Bills. He tore his ACL last year and missed the entire season, but all reports are that his rehabilitation is going well. The Eagles are still taking a risk by adding a player coming off a serious knee injury, but the Bills are making a huge gamble by trading a young defensive star for a running back with 1,461 career carries whose production was way off his norm last year. Especially since McCoy is slated to make $9.75 million in base salary this season and it doesn't bring Buffalo closer to solving its problem at quarterback.

Trent Cole, who will reportedly be cut by the Eagles after 10 years and 88.5 sacks with the team, took to Twitter to sum up his feelings shortly after the trade was reported.

No respect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Caption that!
— Trent Cole (@Pro_Hunt58) March 4, 2015

It is the type of mega-deal you don't see often in the NFL, one that will be debated for many years to come.

Discussed in the Random NFL Tweets thread already...but probably deserves it's own thread.

Was there a schoolyard tradeback?

McCoy's back on the Eagles?

Source: LeSean McCoy 'not going to make it easy' for trade to Bills

March, 3, 2015
Mar 3

10:20

PM ET


By Mike Rodak | ESPN.com



ESPN's Josina Anderson tweeted the following Tuesday night, hours after news broke of the Buffalo Bills' trade with the Philadelphia Eagles:

A source close to LeSean McCoy to me on how the #Eagles RB feels about news of an agreement to trade McCoy to Buffalo: "He’s a Pennsylvania kid. He’s never played football outside of Pennsylvania—high school, college, pro. So of course he's not happy. Sounds like it’s pretty final to me unless LeSean is refusing to go to Buffalo."

On whether the source believes McCoy will make a trade to Buffalo difficult, in light of McCoy’s initial reaction to the news:

"It'll be interesting to see how this process plays itself out because he's an interesting individual. In your mind, when you think of Buffalo you think of cold and losing games. It’s not like it’s the Philadelphia market where you’re always on t.v. and you’re playing for like the division title or that type of thing…It was unexpected. I'll tell you that much.”

The source on how McCoy is feeling at the moment:

"Honestly, he's frustrated ... It's alright. It's the league. I told him that. I guess he just never experienced that, but he was like 'why me.'"

The source said he thinks McCoy is "not going to make it easy, that's for sure."

The source on whether the trade news was a surprise:

"Honestly we were under the impression the whole time, that eventually at some point, Chip [Kelly] was going to ask LeSean to restructure his contract--not a pay cut, but convert some of his signing bonus."

Figures the Bills would completely flat line in the brains dept when Ryan got there. Who the fuck trades an elite young defensive player for a RB with a lot of mileage?

BipolarFan said:

Figures the Bills would completely flat line in the brains dept when Ryan got there. Who the fuck trades an elite young defensive player for a RB with a lot of mileage?

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That elite young LB also has had two ACL injuries.

boozeman said:

That elite young LB also has had two ACL injuries.

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Wonder what we could get for Lee?

BipolarFan said:

Wonder what we could get for Lee?

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We could maybe get Dr. McCoy for Lee...

Isn't he dead?

BipolarFan said:

Figures the Bills would completely flat line in the brains dept when Ryan got there. Who the fuck trades an elite young defensive player for a RB with a lot of mileage?

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I think it's a good move for Buffalo. They already had a very good defense last year without Alonso. With Ryan coming in, they won't have any problems being strong again on D this year. Add to that, supposedly Alonso bristled at Ryan's plans to move him outside.

Meanwhile, Ryan strongly prefers to run the ball and needed a bell cow. True that McCoy isn't young anymore, but even still he probably has 2 or 3 good years left in him. That's valuable to Buffalo.

Supposedly the Eagles are looking at both Spiller and Ingram.

boozeman said:

Supposedly the Eagles are looking at both Spiller and Ingram.

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Both of those are downgrades.

For the Eagles, there is more risk because Alonso has had major injuries to both knees. However, this makes sense for them because they wanted to move on from McCoys contract. They probably preferred a high pick in return, but they probably didn't have a lot of suitors given McCoy's age and mileage. And they still got some value for McCoy.

Speculation is out there that the Eagles plan to trade up for Mariota and are accumulating all this cap room to supplement their lost picks from a Mariota deal with a bunch of free agents. It's certainly plausible.

Iamtdg said:

Both of those are downgrades.

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Maybe. McCoy put up a lot of yards last year, but some of that is because the Eagles run a million plays a game. I think McCoy averaged about 4.2 YPC last year. That's way down from his normal 5 YPC. You could argue McCoy will never be the player he once was again.

Also, Kelly's rushing schemes apparently are best utilized by a one cut type back, which is not McCoy. A guy like Ingram, while less talented, could be a better fit and also has more tread left. You could say the same about Murray.

Genghis Khan said:

For the Eagles, there is more risk because Alonso has had major injuries to both knees. However, this makes sense for them because they wanted to move on from McCoys contract. They probably preferred a high pick in return, but they probably didn't have a lot of suitors given McCoy's age and mileage. And they still got some value for McCoy.

Speculation is out there that the Eagles plan to trade up for Mariota and are accumulating all this cap room to supplement their lost picks from a Mariota deal with a bunch of free agents. It's certainly plausible.

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That's what I was guessing too but I think that's a huge mistake, to presumably give up what will probably end up being about 6-8 picks, including 2 or 3 1st rounders, and then try to supplement your entire team through free agency, especially when you've already went out and created a ton of holes by getting rid of guys like McCoy, Cole and Williams.

History shows you can't construct an entire team through free agency, and you sure as shit aren't going to do it without a whole slew of draft picks on top of that.

I'm hoping they blow a bunch of their space by giving Maxwell a mega-deal, he's a pretty good CB but he's not worth 10+ a year.

One other thing from Buffalo's end is that I think McCoy only has about 1 million left in guarantees on his contract. True they had to give up Alonso to get it, but that's a much more palatable contract situation than they would have had if they'd had to sign McCoy in the event the eagles released him instead. And Alonso was expendable for them.

Nothing spells success like high priced FA's led by a rookie QB who has trouble reading defenses.

Simpleton said:

That's what I was guessing too but I think that's a huge mistake, to presumably give up what will probably end up being about 6-8 picks, including 2 or 3 1st rounders, and then try to supplement your entire team through free agency, especially when you've already went out and created a ton of holes by getting rid of guys like McCoy, Cole and Williams.

History shows you can't construct an entire team through free agency, and you sure as shit aren't going to do it without a whole slew of draft picks on top of that.

I'm hoping they blow a bunch of their space by giving Maxwell a mega-deal, he's a pretty good CB but he's not worth 10+ a year.

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I agree. Those types of trade ups rarely work out.

It's funny, because following their big offseason shake up no one from their front office has spoken until Howie Roseman spoke last week. The gist of what he said is, the type of trade ups where you give up a bunch of picks to move to the top of the draft never work out and he's generally against it. General concensus is Roseman is publicly stating he's against trading up for Mariota so don't blame him if it happens and it doesn't work out.

They've got some dysfunction going on. And Kelly has a lot of power for a guy who has never won it all on any level.