You would have been quite fortunate in your Fantasy Football draft in 2017 to come away with LeSean McCoy and Leonard Fournette on your team. Nice picking. Fournette as a rookie with the Jaguars ran for 1,040 yards and nine touchdowns. McCoy with the Bills had 1,138 rushing yards and six touchdowns, and added 59 receptions.

Pretty darn good.

Three years later, that running back tandem is together with the Buccaneers, but it is not what you think. Two former star backs are now role players on a team that finished 11-5 during the regular season and won three consecutive road playoff games to keep playing on into Super Bowl LV. With Tom Brady, the Bucs are a passing team first and foremost. When they do run it, Ronald Jones is the starter, with Fournette as the backup, McCoy? He is on the team but that is about it.

“I’m always thinking about this all the time — especially now — just how my career has been from being a guy and a franchise player, to now being older and asked to do different things for my role,’’ McCoy said. “You look at the winning — if I can help the young guys out and we’re winning and I’m back in a championship game and the Super Bowl — things like that make it hard to make a decision to call it quits. I always ask myself that.’’

This could be it for McCoy, 32, considering he was a non-playing member of the Buccaneers backfield, with only 10 rushing attempts for 31 yards and 15 receptions for 101 yards in the 10 games he got on the field. This was quite a comedown for McCoy, who at least was a contributor (101 rushing attempts, 465 yards) last season with the Chiefs for their regular season and on into their Super Bowl run.

“I kind of grew into it in Kansas City,’’ McCoy said. “I started out learning the offense and then eventually I became the starter. I got banged up and I missed a game or so and then the backup running backs started playing well — [Damien] Williams took off, so they decided to go with the younger guy. That was tough at first, but over there you have to check your ego. They have so many good offensive players.’’

The 2020 season was a more stark comedown for the player called “Shady’’ who scored 20 touchdowns (17 rushing, three receiving) for the Eagles in 2011 and rushed for 1,607 yards in 2013.

“In the beginning, I was going to be the guy — the backup guy,’’ McCoy said. “Third downs and be the backup to ‘RoJo’ Then, Fournette got released [by the Jaguars] and he came here and I knew the writing on the wall. You pay him the big bucks, he’s a big name, he’s young, he’s still very, very talented. He started playing and my role changed.

“Me just being a veteran, at this point I want to win. Everybody knows the things I’ve done and I want to be able to still affect the game. They look at me now as insurance. If one of the guys gets banged up or they need a blow, they can count on me to go in there, replace them and not miss a beat. That’s cool with me because I love those guys. They always give me all these stories about how they’ve been playing the video games with me when they were in high school, watching my tapes and the highlights, so it all works together and I get joy out of that. I get joy out of helping them out. The role has changed for me, but the goal hasn’t. The goal is to win a championship and I want to be a part of that.’’

McCoy said he sought the counsel of Frank Gore, who in 2020 completed his 16th NFL season with the Jets, the fifth team for the 37-year- old. McCoy knows his days as a starting running back are over, and is not sure what comes next.

“I’m sure I can go to any team, be the second or third back and I think about that — playing longer,’’ McCoy said. “It’s a hard question. It’s up in the air. If I get two championships with all my résumé, it might be over. But you never know, so I think I’ll just take it every day and I’ll revisit that when the time presents itself.”