Philadelphia Eagles running back LeSean McCoy’s performance against the Detroit Lions in the snow remains one of the all-time greatest performances from an NFL player. 

Any fan of football (by which we also mean soccer, depending on which country you’re reading this from), is well aware of the saying ‘could he do it on a cold, wet, windy night in Stoke’. Often used as a marker for how tough someone is and whether or not their ability will hold up when battling against the elements.

And when it comes to playing in the NFL, the country is so big it allows you to deal with multiple extreme weather situations, from the heat of playing the Miami Dolphins in the Florida sun in September, to the rain of the Pacific Northwest when you face the Seattle Seahawks, to the infamous ‘Frozen Tundra’ that is the Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field.

Weather has been something of a talking point within the NFL recently, with the city of Chicago reportedly offering the Bears a roof on their stadium in order to make it ‘more attractive’, whilst also protecting it from the elements, in an effort to stop them moving away from their iconic stadium that they have called home since 1971.

This gives us a chance to throwback to one of the best performances in extreme weather that the NFL has ever seen, when LeSean McCoy and the Philadelphia Eagles pulled out a victory over the Detroit Lions in some instance levels of snow. 

Always had it in him

When you think of the top running backs in the NFL during the 2010s, there is a very good chance that you think of LeSean (nicknamed Shady) McCoy. 

Having been taken by the Eagles in the 2nd round of the 2009 NFL Draft, he had to wait a year before becoming the team’s starter, but he certainly made it worth the wait for them, as he racked up 6,792 rushing yards and 44 touchdowns during his 6 seasons with the Eagles.

He carried on those performances with the Buffalo Bills, putting up 3,814 yards and 25 touchdowns, before winding down his career with the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers as backup, but his dominance in the early part of the decade still landed him a spot on the NFL’s All-Decade team for the 2010s. 

And there was arguably no finer performance than his one against the Lions in Week 14 against the Lions at Lincoln Financial FIeld. 

But this was something special

In conditions so bad that the six inches of snow meant neither team bothered to try and kick field goals, and seven 2-point attempts after eight of the touchdowns, the game was always going to be dominated by what happened in the ground game, but nobody quite expected it to end up like this.

McCoy put on a show that would have been impressive on any normal game, 29 carries for 217 yards and two touchdowns, but becomes more impressive when you consider how bad it must have been under foot for him whilst he was running:

McCoy actually set the franchise record for most rushing yards in a game by an individual during this contest to really put the seal on how great of a performance this was, a record that stands to this day no less.