Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid wanted to give more playing time to Dion Lewis last season
Philadelphia Eagles’ head coach, Andy Reid, has said that he wanted to give more playing time to running back, Dion Lewis, during the last National Football League (NFL) season, but could not do so.
While talking to media on third day of 2012 NFL draft, Reid shed some light on the team’s running back situation and said that he wanted to give Lewis, who was playing his rookie season, more time on the field.
However, that did not happen and Eagles’ regular running back, LeSean McCoy, continued to play as starter. But Reid thinks that Lewis should be given more chances apparently to get some load off McCoy.
Interestingly, McCoy is just 23 years old and it comes as a surprising development that the head coach is thinking to ease off some load.
McCoy’s performance has also been commendable so far. He made his NFL debut with Eagles in 2009.
In his rookie season, he started only four games while playing 16 and rushed for 637 yards on 155 carries and scored four touchdowns.
In his second season, McCoy started 13 games while playing 15 and registered 1,080 rushing yards on 207 attempts and scored seven touchdowns.
In the last season, he played and started 15 games in which he rushed for 1,309 yards on 273 carries and got impressive 17 touchdowns.
Lewis, on the other hand, did not start any game last season, but he appeared in total 15 games in which he rushed for 102 yards on 23 attempts and scored one touchdown.
When asked about how he was planning to utilise the two running backs in the next season, Reid said that the performance of both players will be monitored during the training camp before making a final call.
He commented:
"We'll see how it goes. We're good with young guys and we'll see how that works out. With Dion (Lewis), I would have liked to have gotten him a little more time last year as we went on. I didn't end up doing that and I probably overplayed (LeSean) McCoy
a little bit, even though he doesn't want to hear that. As he continues to get older and have the number of reps under his belt that he does, you'll want to back off the number of reps that he does."
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