Media blitz day for LeSean McCoy.
Both Pittsburgh dailies had stories on him. You know he’s been well coached… in media relations.
“It isn’t about yards, about touchdowns, about accolades for me. The only numbers that matter are 5-7 and I want to do everything in my power to make sure we improve on that,” he said of Pitt’s record last season.
“If we go to a bowl game, win a lot of games — that’s how you can judge my season because that’s my focus. Maybe teams will key on me — that will open stuff up for [fullback] Conredge [Collins] or the passing game.
“I don’t know if I can do better individually, but as a team, we all want to and know we can do better.”
Not that McCoy isn’t confident in himself.
McCoy, for one, believes he’s a more complete back after spending a full year in the weight room and conditioning under strength coach Buddy Morris. Most of all, McCoy said he’s become a student of the game by watching more film.
“I understand the game of football. It’s more than just raw talent out there,” McCoy said. “I’m a little more confident now that I know what’s out there and what I have to do. Last year, I was curious about what I had to do and what was going to be out there for me. I was just playing, just trying to do what I do best and just run. Like coach said, I left a lot of runs on the field, a lot of long ones. It was me trying to do too much.”
Well, given the offense last year, McCoy had little choice but to try and do too much.
I am really looking forward to this year.
Without it sounding like I can’t just sit back and enjoy the McCoy era, as a Pitt fan, I’d like that era to last as long as possible. So it’s tough to at least not look ahead and realize that there’s a chance this COULD be his last year.
As far as him departing, so much will depend on what he does this season. It’s easy to look at the jump Larry Fitzgerald made and say McCoy could do the same thing.
But I think two things have to be considered. In terms of an underclassman making that jump from Division I college ball to the NFL, I’d have to think that transition would be a little easier for a wideout than it would be for a running back just because a wideout is not quite as directly exposed to all the physical adjustments (a wideout isn’t diving headfirst into a pile of defensive linemen who all move as quickly as most of the defensive backs he was beating in college).
And quite honestly, McCoy looks like he could use an extra year to get a little bit more upper-body strength to withstand the pounding of the NFL. Put him up against someone like Jonathan Stewart (who lists at about 5’10”, 235) or Rashard Mendenhall (5’10”, 225) and you can see a little of what I’m talking about.
