Will LeSean McCoy lead the NFL in rushing from 2012 to 2021?

by Chase Stuart on March 6, 2018

In one of the first posts at Football Perspective, back before the start of the 2012 season, I asked the question: who will lead the NFL in rushing from 2012 to 2021? At the time, the last seven running backs to lead the league in rushing over a 10-year period were LaDainian Tomlinson, Edgerrin James, Curtis Martin, Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders, Eric Dickerson, and Walter Payton. That’s a pretty good list of the top running backs over the last 30 years, reinforcing how impressive it is to lead the league in rushing for a decade.

How did our predictions go? Well, see for yourself:

LeSean McCoy, Beanie Wells and DeMarco Murray all are entering their age 24 season, making them perhaps the best hope among the young runners with NFL experience. On the other hand, along with Richardson, Doug Martin, David Wilson, Ronnie Hillman and Lamar Miller made the 2012 draft strong at the position. In the NFC West, Isaiah Pead and Kendall Hunter (or LaMichael James) could be the future for their teams for the next decade. As always, it’s too early to say.

In the collegiate ranks, South Carolina’s Marcus Lattimore is expected to be the cream of the 2013 class, with Auburn transfer Michael Dyer and Wisconsin’s Montee Ball also in the mix. And based on past history, we can’t count out sophomores Malcolm Brown or De’Anthony Thomas. If you had to pick which player will lead the league in rushing yards from 2012 to 2021, Trent Richardson is the obvious choice. After him, I’d probably be pretty evenly split among McCoy, Martin and Lattimore.

Let’s just say that with the obvious exception of McCoy, those predictions don’t hold up super well in hindsight. Which, by the way, is one of the main points of this post. It’s really hard to figure out which running backs will turn into stars and which will wind up having nondescript careers. Players like Hillman or Pead or Hunter had flashes where you could squint and see a long career of success, while Martin had two seasons with 1400+ yards and (to date) no other seasons with even 500+ rushing yards.

Here are the actual leaders in rushing yards from 2012-to-2017; in other words, this is with 60% of the period done.

Query Results Table
						Game	Game	Rush	Rush	Rush	Rush	Rush
Rk	Player	From	To	Draft	Tm	G	GS	Att	Yds ▼	Y/A	TD	Y/G
1	LeSean McCoy	2012	2017	2-53	TOT	87	87	1550	7066	4.56	38	81.2
2	Frank Gore	2012	2017	3-65	TOT	96	96	1573	6401	4.07	34	66.7
3	DeMarco Murray	2012	2017	3-71	TOT	86	79	1440	6277	4.36	47	73.0
4	Matt Forte	2012	2017	2-44	TOT	86	77	1342	5563	4.15	33	64.7
5	Adrian Peterson	2012	2017	1-7	TOT	60	57	1168	5524	4.73	35	92.1
6	Alfred Morris	2012	2017	6-173	TOT	92	69	1262	5503	4.36	32	59.8
7	Marshawn Lynch	2012	2017	1-12	TOT	70	66	1214	5461	4.50	46	78.0
8	Le’Veon Bell	2013	2017	2-48	PIT	62	62	1229	5336	4.34	35	86.1
9	Lamar Miller	2012	2017	4-97	TOT	91	75	1144	4891	4.28	27	53.7
10	Mark Ingram	2012	2017	1-28	NOR	84	54	1061	4888	4.61	39	58.2
11	Doug Martin	2012	2017	1-31	TAM	68	65	1150	4633	4.03	26	68.1
12	Jamaal Charles	2012	2017	3-73	TOT	68	50	902	4529	5.02	32	66.6
13	LeGarrette Blount	2012	2017		TOT	89	33	956	4100	4.29	40	46.1
14	Chris Johnson	2012	2017	1-24	TOT	67	49	976	4006	4.10	17	59.8
15	Jonathan Stewart	2012	2017	1-13	CAR	69	51	974	3818	3.92	25	55.3
16	Chris Ivory	2012	2017		TOT	77	36	896	3762	4.20	22	48.9
17	Eddie Lacy	2013	2017	2-61	TOT	60	51	857	3614	4.22	23	60.2
18	Cam Newton	2012	2017	1-1	CAR	93	92	702	3614	5.15	40	38.9
19	Ryan Mathews	2012	2016	1-12	TOT	60	43	804	3492	4.34	24	58.2
20	Arian Foster	2012	2016		TOT	45	43	817	3430	4.20	25	76.2
21	Todd Gurley	2015	2017	1-10	RAM	44	43	786	3296	4.19	29	74.9
22	Russell Wilson	2012	2017	3-75	SEA	96	96	578	3275	5.67	16	34.1
23	Devonta Freeman	2014	2017	4-103	ATL	61	43	753	3248	4.31	30	53.2
24	Latavius Murray	2014	2017	6-181	TOT	61	42	759	3120	4.11	28	51.1
25	Isaiah Crowell	2014	2017		CLE	64	45	737	3118	4.23	21	48.7

Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/6/2018.

McCoy is already the career leader in rushing yards from 2009 to 2017; absent some shocking results in the 2018 season, that means McCoy will already have a “decade rushing title” under his belt. He is also an overwhelming favorite to lead the league in rushing for the decade of the ’10s, and from 2011 to 2019. If he does it from ’12 to ’21 — which, well, he sure seems like the favorite to do so — that would give him four “decade rushing crowns.”

I’m not sure how much McCoy feels like a Hall of Famer to folks, but I think when historians review his career, he will really stick out as one. Part of it may be him bridging the gap between the stud RB era of the ’00s and whatever era we are about to enter, but McCoy has been a high volume back with a high YPC for a lot of years. That’s a formula that always lands a player in Canton.

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