Why Trade Shady McCoy?

Why trade Shady McCoy? What were the Eagles thinking about?

Those two questions have been floating around since the Eagles traded Shady to the Buffalo Bills on Tuesday. Let’s take those queries one at a time – in reverse order.

What were the Eagles thinking about?

After adding Shady’s base salary of $9.75-million plus roster and workout bonuses of $250,000 each, they were thinking that $10.25-million was an exorbitant amount of money to pay for a running back in today’s NFL.

And their thinking was right on the money – pun intended.

Here’s the 2015 cap hits for the twenty highest-paid running backs in 2015. Notice the steep drop-off after the top eight names on the list.

I give credit to spotrac.com for being the source of the list.

Bottom line – Shady McCoy just isn’t worth ten-million dollars. He had to go. As Tom Hanks said in League of Their Own, “There’s no crying in baseball” – and there’s no room for sentiment in the NFL.

That the Eagles were able to get Kiko Alonso – a young, promising linebacker in exchange for McCoy – was an example of good old-fashioned horse-trading. In this case, Chip Kelly – or whoever was responsible for putting that deal together – gets my kudos for a job well done.

Which brings us to the original question: Why trade Shady McCoy?

Believe it or not, I answered this question back on November 20 when I said “Look for Shady to be wearing a different uniform next season.” I’m pretty good at reading between the lines, and the hints were all in place back then. Here are the first and last paragraphs from that column.

I stated my reasons for making such a prediction back then – and my reasons haven’t changed. There are five reasons why the Chip Kelly and the Eagles traded Shady McCoy.

– The aforementioned $10.25-million cap hit.

– Shady’s Dancing with the Stars running style rubs Chip Kelly the wrong way. Chip prefers the straight-ahead runner – i.e. Marshawn Lynch and DeMarco Murray – or, say, Chris Polk.

– Shady sided with Cary Williams early during the 2014 season when Williams openly criticized Chip Kelly’s training regimen as being too enervating.

– Shady McCoy’s numbers were down last season. To me, that seems to mean that his shelf-life is starting to run out. Chip Kelly and I must be on the same page here. Trading Shady now, while he still had value, was a helluva lot better than holding on to, say, an Andre Johnson. The Texans held onto Johnson too long and got nothing in return when they released him this week.

– Don’t discount Shady’s publicly-proclaimed friendship with DeSean Jackson – who, as we all know, Chip dumped after the 2013 season without getting anything in return. Shady even publicly commented about trading texts with Jackson during the week leading up to the Eagles-Redskins game.

Put it all together and it spells t-r-a-d-e S-h-a-d-y M-c-C-o-y.