Eagles’ investment in Barkley’s deal brings them immeasurable returns

PHILADELPHIA — In the final days of the 2024 regular season, with the Philadelphia Eagles’ having already secured the NFC’s No. 2 seed, head coach Nick Sirianni had to decide whether running back Saquon Barkley would play or sit out an inconsequential game in Week 18.

It was far from a meaningless decision. Before meeting with Barkley, Sirianni consulted team owner Jeffrey Lurie, general manager Howie Roseman, assistant coaches and players. The Eagles largely owed their resurgence to the running back, but he would be denied a shot at NFL history.

Barkley was not dejected. He was content with the backstory of the 100 yards that separated him from Eric Dickerson on the NFL’s single-season rushing leaderboard. He was OK with going for the record, he told the team owner, but he didn’t want to put the team at risk.

So Barkley sat along with 18 other starters in an eventual 20-13 win against his former team, the New York Giants.

Sirianni could not accept any risk of not having Barkley available for the NFL playoffs, which for the Eagles will begin Sunday in a wild-card game against the Green Bay Packers in Philadelphia.

The Eagles have never fielded anyone like Barkley. They signed him as a free agent in March, placed him behind one of the NFL’s best offensive lines and set him loose within a run-oriented system that averaged the team’s most rushing attempts per game since 1951.

He shattered LeSean McCoy’s single-season team rushing record in 13 games. His team-record 2,283 scrimmage yards included the supernatural scenes of him scoring three times in the season opener in Sao Paulo; leaping over a defender backward and outdueling the Baltimore Ravens’ Derrick Henry.

Traveling Eagles fans have chanted “MVP” in nearly every city during Barkley’s season of self-actualization. Although the odds for winning the MVP award favor Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, Barkley has his supporters in what has recently been a quarterback-only award. And despite a leaguewide devaluation of running backs, the Eagles were so in on Barkley that they paid him more annually ($12.6 million) than any other running back in franchise history.

Alec Halaby, an assistant general manager for the Eagles whose roots are in analytics, said in August that the Eagles could not pinpoint an individual’s impact apart from his team. Football, unlike baseball, does not have a “hitter-pitcher interaction that we can really isolate.”

But Barkley, behind an inferior Giants line, averaged more yards after contact per rush in six seasons (3.0) than the Eagles’ backs averaged in the same span (2.95), per TruMedia. He totaled a team-leading 62 plays of 20-plus yards since 2018. Barkley was an outlier in the market, Halaby said, “a special player that we thought could have a unique impact on the offense and the team as a whole.”

And Sirianni needed a spark. He hired Kellen Moore, along with two other offensive staffers, to remove the staleness from a system that stagnated during his team’s 2023 collapse. Sirianni always insisted a schematic overhaul was not warranted. The Eagles fielded a top 9 offense in terms of expected points added, or EPA, per play in each of their offensive-minded coach’s first three seasons. Sirianni still believed in a run-oriented system that leveraged dual-threat quarterback Jalen Hurts behind an enviable offensive line to keep defenses guessing against the run and unlock explosive one-on-one opportunities in the passing game. Once Barkley entered the equation, Sirianni said it was “really open season on everything” when he and Moore started building their playbook.

“Anything you’ve done, anything you thought about doing, anything you look at and say, ‘Man, could Saquon do this?’ The answer is yes, mostly,” Sirianni said.

He quickly corrected himself: “Not mostly. Always.”

After the Eagles’ alarming 2-2 start, Sirianni and Moore leaned hard into Barkley. The aggressive structure empowered an offensive line that secured three Pro Bowl selections. “It’s very simple,” left guard Landon Dickerson said during the season. “If you’re in a fight, do you want to punch somebody in the face, or do you want to get punched?”

The Eagles knocked out the Dallas Cowboys twice by a combined score of 75-13. They outscored the Giants 48-16 in a two-game sweep. Barkley rushed for 409 yards in his three games against those division foes, sitting out the majority (or all) of the fourth quarter each time. Kenneth Gainwell and Will Shipley totaled 28 carries in those fourth quarters, which, at Barkley’s 5.8 yards per rush, would have supplied the difference on the NFL’s single-season leaderboard between Barkley (2,005) and Dickerson (2,105).

A final shot at the Giants in the regular-season finale might have, too. But there were no regrets.

“We’ll let Eric Dickerson have it,” right tackle Lane Johnson said.

Barkley wanted the record for himself, for his linemen, for his family. He said his father took the news the hardest, since their last name would have been attached to NFL history for as long as the record stood. But Barkley also knows there are caveats to history’s calculations. Dickerson’s name may be first in the record book, but, according to Barkley, “the two most impressive” single-season feats belong to O.J. Simpson, who rushed for 2,003 yards in 14 games in 1973, and Barry Sanders, who gained 2,053 yards on 335 carries in 1997. Barkley is also aware that Terrell Davis owns the single-season rushing record, if you include the length of the 1998 playoffs — a stretch of 2,476 yards that ended with a Super Bowl title.

“That matters the most,” Barkley said. “That’s how I look at it. That’s how I tell my family: ‘We didn’t come here, I didn’t sign here, to break Eric Dickerson’s record. We came to win a Super Bowl.’”

Barkley buttressed the Eagles with his own brand of authority. Comfortable in the spotlight, earnest in his interactions, he quickly became a mentor to the team’s young core and an ally to its proven pillars.

Barkley fit in an organization that places value on player mentorship. Before Philadelphia’s Week 3 game against the New Orleans Saints, Barkley called over a second-year defensive tackle, Jalen Carter. “Why not today, bruh?” Barkley said. “Make your mark, dawg. I’m telling you. I played against you. They are scared of you.”

Carter recorded two tackles for loss in a 15-12 win. Rookie wide receiver Johnny Wilson said “every game, at some point, you’ll see Saquon walking by your bench and trying to hype up the team and keep everybody going.”

Barkley represents a notable presence on an active roster whose average age is 25. It’s a presence some Giants players miss. Tight end Daniel Bellinger told ESPN: “For me, the biggest part of losing Saquon was the locker room aspect.”

Barkley exudes a sense of gratitude, his teammates say. After he leaped over a Jaguars defender backward, a reporter asked him how that split-second option even entered his mind. “I got to give credit to God, I ain’t going to lie,” he said.

Reporters laughed. Barkley didn’t.

Barkley’s expression held relevance once Dickerson’s record came within reach. When Dickerson found out in 1999 that he’d be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he wrote on his calendar: “Thank you God for this gift.” Although some of the public perceived that Barkley and Dickerson would be combative over the single-season rushing record, the running backs shared a mutual respect for their place in history.

Dickerson, who has often expressed he wanted to retain his record, told Bill Belichick and Jim Gray on SiriusXM that he called Barkley, congratulated him on joining the 2,000-yard club and told him he wished he would have at least seen Barkley get a shot at breaking his single-season mark.

So did the Eagles’ offensive linemen.

But they at least got another photograph for their wall. After Barkley broke the 2,000-yard mark against the Cowboys, he gathered with the linemen for a group photo in the locker room. Suddenly, center Landon Dickerson reached down, picked Barkley up and cradled him in his arms. The camera clicked. They’re all grinning. They’re all flashing two fingers.

For 2,000 yards, yes. But with Barkley, they have a shot at winning Philadelphia’s second Super Bowl.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company