LeSean McCoy: 'Our Confidence Level Is Out Of This World'
By Joseph Santoliquito
Philadelphia, PA (CBS)—It took nanoseconds for the Dallas talk to begin in the Eagles' locker room soon after their 54-11 thrashing of the Chicago Bears on Sunday night at Lincoln Financial Field.
Still basking in one of their most memorable beatdowns of the season, the Eagles were drunk with contentment. But behind their eyes, you couldn't help but feel this one-game, winner-take-all showdown at Dallas Sunday night on national TV comes with some payback.
The Eagles played their most dismal game this season in a 17-3 setback to Dallas on Oct. 20 at Lincoln Financial Field. It was also the worst game of the season for Nick Foles, who looked skittish and uncertain, completing 11 of 29 for 80 yards, while the Eagles were held to 278 yards of total offense.
Foles says he's learned from that first Dallas game.
"You can't let one game defeat you," said Foles, after going 21-for-25 for 230 yards and two touchdowns against the Bears. In forging a big halftime lead, he was 14 for 17 for 145 yards, two touchdowns and a quarterback rating of 141.4. "If I know anything about myself it's that I am going to keep fighting. If I know anything about this team it's that we are going to keep fighting. You learn from mistakes in games. You learn from games like that and you move forward. The team kept together and we kept together as a team.
"The coaching staff did a great job. Everybody at the NovaCare Complex did a great job of keeping the beat of the team going. We've built every week. We've built every week and we're continuing to build. We still have a lot of work to do. We're going to look at this film in a critical way to see where we can improve, if I can make better decisions to put us in a better position. We look at the film like we did the Minnesota game. We lost that game and we won this game, but we have to be critical and keep getting better."
LeSean McCoy didn't fare much better in the first encounter with the Cowboys. McCoy, the NFL's leading rusher with 1,476 yards and just 37 yards away from breaking Wilbert Montgomery's single-season rushing mark of 1,512 in 1979, was held to 55 yards on 18 carries against Dallas.
"I can't even remember that far back [to the Dallas game]," McCoy said. "I did not play well, so I can't even remember how that game went. I can tell you that they didn't see the best of the Eagles. They didn't see the best of Nick Foles, LeSean McCoy, they didn't see the best of us but they will this Sunday so it will be a different story."
McCoy said the difference comes in the confidence level.
"There's times, even last week [against Minnesota], we didn't run the ball," said McCoy, who ran through Chicago for 133 yards and two TDs. "That's cool, but I still thought, 'Aw, there is no way we can lose.' Just the confidence level is out of this world. Every play is going to work, every play is going to be effective. It is always this feeling like, 'Oh, we can't lose.' It's just the confidence, I think the confidence on this team right now and we are all playing together. Every phase of the team, from special teams to offense and defense, we are all playing well. That's what a team needs to have if they want to be successful."
