The biggest development for the Buffalo Bills in the week leading up to their first playoff game in nearly 18 years is undoubtedly about whether or not the star running back LeSean McCoy will be able to play on Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
McCoy injured his ankle on Sunday against the Miami Dolphins, but returned to stretch with teammates ahead of Thursday's practice -- although he was officially listed as a non-participant. After the practice, McCoy addressed reporters about his injury.
Here is the Q&A, in full:
On Sunday, you were pounding your fist into the turf. How long did it take you to get past the frustration of this and focus on this week’s game.
McCoy: Yeah, I was just kind of disappointed, just how I was feeling — so much pain on the field. I’ve been in a similar situation with my ankle in high school. The good thing is that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. We’ve just been treating it after I got back from the game. It’s been feeling a lot better. I’m out of the boot and I can walk around without any pain, so that’s a plus.
So how encouraged are you by the progress it has made to this point?
McCoy: I’m definitely happy how things are working out so far, but I’ve got a lot more room for improvement — especially where I want to be at. I know my body, I know myself. Especially the way I play — it’s more cutting than running, so I’m just trying to get better.
Is it the same ankle as the one in high school?
McCoy: Yeah.
What steps do you need to go through and things you need to be able to do to feel confident that, maybe not even at 100-percent, that you can play on Sunday?
McCoy: I just want to be able to cut well enough to where I don’t have a lot of pain when I’m cutting. I just want to be close to the best… as far as just 100-percent as I can get. But the type of game like this, man, you’ve got to lay it on the line. If you can’t get 100-percent, as long as I’m out there and I can run effective enough, I’ll do it. So, we’ll just see.
Is it more of a rest thing or more of a rehab thing right now?
McCoy: I think it’s a little of both. You want to stay off of it as much as possible, so, kind of test it out. And the game’s Sunday, and today’s only Thursday. We’ve got some time.
If things progress as they have since Sunday night, are you at least confident enough that you’ll be able to give it a go.
McCoy: We’ll see. We’ll see. I don’t want to make any promises. A lot of my teammates ask me the same questions, and I don’t want to lie to them. People that know me know that I want to be out there. But I’ve been in a situation like this before, here, and I played on a bad ankle, foot, actually it was a hamstring — and I didn’t do well at all. It kind of hurt us, and I don’t want to be in that same situation.
How relieved were you when the X-Rays came back negative?
McCoy: Man, I was excited, just because I know that the pain that I was in. I couldn’t really move my foot at all so I was happy that everything was negative.