Eagles' McCoy spinning his wheels

SOONER OR LATER, teams will back off, the Eagles figure. They will notice that the Birds are second in the NFL in points per game (33.7), despite opponents' deployment of safeties in the box and their scheming of linebackers to fly into gaps, all to blunt Chip Kelly's run-based offense. Teams will start worrying more about the fact that Nick Foles leads the league in passing yardage, with 978.

At that point, LeSean McCoy will see some daylight, will find a cutback lane or two, and the Eagles' run game will again resemble what we saw last season.

Yes, if it happens in the near future, it will have to happen behind a patchwork offensive line, but that line doesn't figure to be any worse than the one that has kept Foles from being sacked the past 2 weeks, and allowed him to throw for 656 yards and four touchdowns in that span.

McCoy's 175 yards on 60 carries rank him 17th in the league. His 2.9 yards-per-carry figure is lower than that of anyone else in the top 50. These are not the numbers the NFL's defending rushing champ envisioned in training camp, when he talked about the possibility of a 2,000-yard season.

McCoy talked yesterday about the frustration of watching opponent game tape every week. "You see other teams run the ball on 'em. Then they play a different style defense" when they face the Eagles. "The attention [given the Eagles' run game] this year is so much more . . . They're bringing the extra guy in, especially on the cutbacks, and they're kinda shutting off the lanes."

He said the Redskins "had a lot of guys in the gaps, and they just played well. They brought the extra guy down in the box, filled it up and made plays . . . Hopefully the passing game opens some things up, and now that's kind of a threat, for people to back off a little bit."

This week? Well, the 49ers, without NaVorro Bowman and Aldon Smith, aren't quite the Redskins (third vs. the run) up front, but they aren't much worse, ranking seventh after three games. And the Eagles are going to try yet another o-line combo, Matt Tobin moving into the left-guard spot, Dennis Kelly switching to right guard, Dave Molk subbing for injured center Jason Kelce, and Todd Herremans moving from right guard to right tackle.

"Any back'll tell you that," McCoy said, when asked if there's an adjustment to new blockers. "You're so used to each player on the line and how they play. I was blessed last year, having them for the whole season," when no Eagles o-line starter missed a game. On Sunday, left tackle Jason Peters will be the only Eagles starter remaining in the spot he occupied in 2013.

"It's something similar to a quarterback and his wide receivers - he knows each of them so well, the good to the bad . . . But that's something we can't dwell on. It is what it is," McCoy said.

Herremans said he thinks it's easier to move from the inside to the outside than the other direction - a tackle works pretty much one-on-one, doesn't have to sync with a center as much as a guard sometimes does. He might be a tackle again only for a week, as Lane Johnson is scheduled to return from his four-game banned-substance suspension on Monday.

Herremans was asked if the running-game problems are because of the way the Eagles are being defensed, or because the offensive line isn't what it was last season.

"Yes to both," he said. "In general, we've just got to make our point and punch angles . . . give Shady and [Darren] Sproles some creases to hit. I didn't think we did that very well last week."

Sproles' 49-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-1 in the opener against Jacksonville helped make the rushing numbers look better in that game, but Sproles has gotten just six carries since, gaining 46 yards on them.

Sproles tends to hit the hole more decisively than McCoy, but Chip Kelly said yesterday he doesn't think McCoy is dancing too much. Kelly said, "There were a lot of times there wasn't a lot of movement [blockers getting into defenders] on Sunday, and that's kind of what we're dealing with."

Tight end Brent Celek said the Eagles are dealing with more than just an opponent leaving a safety in the box. "In some cases, they're putting them right on the line of scrimmage," he said.

Herremans said it will help the line because Molk knew he was the center from Monday on, as Kelce needed surgery for a sports hernia suffered Sunday that figures to sideline him from a month to 2 months.

"It's going to be a lot better, if he gets the whole week with us, rather than just coming off the sidelines" in the third quarter, as Molk did when Kelce went down, Herremans said. "It's tough when you lose a communicator like Kelce, because he's just so over the top with it . . . Molk's been doing a solid job in practice, overemphasizing things and just making sure we're all on the same page before we snap the ball."

Molk said Washington "threw it all in the box. They wanted to take our run away. Good thing we were able to pass."

Molk said he gets "more information, more time to study" as the starter, not having to worry about snapping for the scout team. Wade Smith is now the backup center.

As frustrated as he might be, McCoy wanted to make sure he made this point yesterday: In 2013, he got off to a much better start: 395 yards on 62 carries through three games, 6.37 yards per carry. But the Eagles were 1-2. This year, the team is 3-0.

"There's not too many great feelings to have about that," McCoy said, referring to the losses a year ago. "If I'm [ticked] off that we're not running the ball as well, and we're winning, what does that look like? And deep inside, I want to win. I really do."

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian