By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

No. 31: March 20, 2015 The Bills trade Kiko Alonso to Philadelphia for LeSean McCoy.

LeSean McCoy was one of the most exciting running backs in the National Football League in the first half of the 2010s. He led the league in rushing with 1,607 yards in 2013, and three other 1,000-yard seasons. However, the Philadelphia Eagles and coach Chip Kelly weren’t anxious to hang on to McCoy because of financial implications of his big contract on the salary cap.

That prompted the Bills to ask about a trade. They offered Kiko Alonso, a good linebacker who had missed all of the 2014 season with an injury, and the Eagles accepted it. One report said the two sides worked everything out in about 20 minutes.

The Bills and McCoy quickly agreed on a contract extension, and McCoy suited up in a Buffalo uniform that fall. It didn’t take him long to become the most exciting running back to play for the Bills since the days of Thurman Thomas. McCoy broke 1,000 yards twice in his first three years as a Bill. Alonso only spent one season In Philadelphia, and has been doing his tackling for the Dolphins since then.

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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