LeSean McCoy spent his first six NFL seasons — by far his most productive — with the Philadelphia Eagles. He spent the first four of those under head coach Andy Reid. The year after Reid left, in 2013, McCoy led the league with 1,607 rushing yards. The following year, he added another 1,319.
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However, the issues he had with new head coach Chip Kelly led to his exit. McCoy joined the Buffalo Bills ahead of the 2015 campaign. He earned Pro Bowl honors in the first three seasons in Buffalo before falling on harder times in 2018, rushing for a career-low 514 yards.
That dip in performance led to the Bills trying to get McCoy to take a pay cut when his contract was up for renewal following that season. Looking at Buffalo’s underwhelming roster, the veteran back took the attempt as an insult. So when Reid — who was by then with the Super Bowl-contending Kansas City Chiefs — offered him a smaller deal, he took it.
“When you get older and you [have] got your own name and all that, they try to put you in a box of mentorship. And I don’t mind mentoring, but yo, I’m burying these dudes,” McCoy said on Marshawn Lynch’s podcast.
“[With] the Bills, I was supposed to make $7 million, and they was like, ‘Yo, let’s take a pay cut’. And I was like, ‘For what!? You got all these bum-a** linemen, these bum a** players, why you tryna get my money’?” He added.
McCoy was a decade into his NFL career at that point. He had racked up six Pro Bowls, two First-Team All-Pros, and six 1,000-yard seasons. He had done it all. Almost.
He was yet to win a playoff game, and the Chiefs were primed for a deep run. It was a win-win situation for him.
“So I said, go on, release me, I see where this is going. So I got released, and Andy Reid hit me up… Andy said, ‘Look, Shady, Ima give you about $4 million’, but my man was like, ‘Yo, we’re gonna give you six. I got cut for seven’, so they would give me six,” recalled McCoy.
“I was like, that’s two million dollars, but I said, ‘Man, we [are] not gonna win over there. We can win over there with Pat, Andy’,” added McCoy, who ended up signing on with the Chiefs for one year in 2019.
He started nine games and rushed for 465 yards and four scores during the regular season. However, Damien Williams took over the main RB duties throughout the postseason. So while Shady did pick up a ring that year, he played just one snap throughout the entire playoff run.
He had a similar season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020. He received just 10 carries for 31 yards during the regular season and played just two snaps in the postseason. But by the end of those 2020 playoffs, he was crowned a Super Bowl champion for the second straight year.
There’s no doubt that taking the slight pay cut in 2019 was worth it, considering he finished with two rings in his final two years. Before that, he had won zero playoff games in his first 10 years in the league.
In his career, McCoy earned $61.24 million. While many would argue that he could have made a lot more than that, he knows his priorities well.
He spent almost half of his first $1 million on his family, securing their future with a $400,000 house in Pennsylvania and buying his father an Escalade truck worth $80,000.
