Coming off the worst season of his career (514 rushing yards, 3.2 yards per carry), and with a 2019 salary that was prohibitive based on that decline, the Buffalo Bills finally cut LeSean McCoy on Saturday. But it was clear he wouldn’t lack for suitors or be available for long, and Saturday night he signed with the Kansas City Chiefs.
McCoy will reunite with Andy Reid in Kansas City. McCoy spent the first six seasons of his career with the Philadelphia Eagles, with Reid as the head coach the first four.
In 2016 and 2017 with Buffalo, McCoy finished as RB3 and RB7 respectively in standard scoring (RB4 and RB7 in full-point PPR). But he crossed over the dreaded age-30 mark for running backs last year, after finishing second in the league in carries in 2017 (287), and the results showed it.
In the wake of McCoy’s signing, that sound you hear is fantasy owners who drafted Damien Williams collectively screaming out in frustration. After a fantastic run replacing Kareem Hunt as Kansas City’s lead back late last season, he’s been going off the board in the second round all summer. Taking Williams that high carried some inherent risk anyway, for those of us who didn’t quite buy in, and now it looks especially bad as the Chiefs look set to deploy a backfield committee by every definition of the word. McCoy’s signing also takes some shine of rookie deep sleeper Darwin Thompson.
Outside of three seasons with nine or more rushing touchdowns in his career, McCoy has not been a particularly prolific paint visitor. He had 13 touchdowns in 2016, but the four seasons around that in the last five he has gone 5 (2014), 3 (2015), 6 (2017) and 3 (2018) in the scoring column. That being said, he could get a good share of the goal line work for a Chiefs’ offense that will be in position to score plenty.
It’s worth checking on in your league, but McCoy is already heavily owned (66 percent in Yahoo! leagues, 81 percent in ESPN leagues).
It’s hard to confidently say he’ll be much on his own as a fantasy back this year, but McCoy’s greatest impact might be the value he takes away from Williams for those that believed enough to draft him as their first running back. Instead of having a clear lead back in Williams, with Thompson perhaps swooping in at some point, one of the league’s best offenses is now set to have an unpredictable backfield split. On the other hand, those who drafted McCoy have now fallen into a piece of that offense with a clearer path to touches for him.
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