History suggested that Saquon Barkley would likely be headed for a dip in production after one of the greatest seasons in NFL history.
The Eagles superstar was just the ninth running back to eclipse 2,000 yards rushing and the third to lead the NFL in rushing while also helping his team win a Super Bowl title, joining Denver’s Terrell Davis and Dallas’ Emmitt Smith with that distinction.
An offseason study of the eight previous backs to rush for 2,000 yards revealed that they all had declines the year after in overall yards and yards per carry while seven of the eight also had fewer touchdowns.
Most of them still had good seasons — six of the eight rushed for more than 1,000 yards and seven of the eight averaged more than 4.0 yards per carry. Derrick Henry was on the verge of another great season — he had 937 yards through eight games — but missed his final nine games with Tennessee because of a foot fracture.
Barkley, meanwhile, is off to his worst five-game start since 2021, the year he returned from a torn ACL injury that cost him all but two games of the 2020 season with the Giants.
And, now, he’s also dealing with a knee injury as the Eagles prepare for their Thursday night game against the Giants at MetLife Stadium. Barkley said after the Eagles’ walk-through practice Tuesday that he will be ready to play against his former team, but he admitted the injury did hinder him some late in Sunday’s 21-17 loss to Denver.
Barkley has carried the ball 83 times for 267 yards and three touchdowns so far this season. He has also caught 17 passes for 128 yards with one touchdown.
Davis, after rushing for 2,008 yards in 1998, had a worse start with the Broncos in 1999. His season ended after four games and he had carried the ball 67 times for 211 yards, a 3.1-yard average per carry. He’s the only member of the 2,000-yard club to get off to a worse start than Barkley the following season.
The other seven guys on the list all had at least one 100-yard game through their first five games and six of the seven were averaging 4.3 yards or more per carry.
Barkley is averaging 3.2 yards per carry and his single-game high rushing total was 88 yards in Week 2 at Kansas City.
It looked as though Barkley might be getting untracked Sunday when he ran five times for 30 yards in the first half and then caught a 47-yard touchdown pass from Jalen Hurts on the Eagles’ first possession of the third quarter.
But he ended up with one carry in the second half and nine touches for the game.
“I’m not going to really get too caught up in that,” Barkley said. “At the end of the day, whether we ran the ball enough or not, we had an opportunity to win a football game, and we didn’t. We didn’t do enough.”
Just because Barkley doesn’t want to get into how many times he touched the ball doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.
Through five games, Barkley’s 83 rushing attempts are fewer than every other back who rushed for 2,000 yards their previous season except Davis and, again, the former Denver back only played four games.
O.J. Simpson, the first to rush for 2,000 yards, is the next closest with 97 rushing attempts through five games in 1974.
Add in Barkley’s 17 catches for 128 yards and he has 100 touches and 395 yards from scrimmage.
Again, with the exception of Davis, the other members of the 2,000-yard club all had more touches and more yards from scrimmage after five games than Barkley has this season.
Perhaps Barkley is a victim of not being the squeaky wheel on the offense. That title belongs to wide receiver A.J. Brown.
A report by Philly Voice’s Jimmy Kempski that Barkley, Brown and Hurts had a long discussion Monday about the offense was confirmed Tuesday by both Barkley and Hurts.
“Yeah, we had a conversation, but I’m not going to speak much on it,” Barkley said. “I felt like that conversation was meant to be between us, but the focus was all about the team. I think it was a good thing.”
It will be interesting to see how much Barkley gets the ball against the Giants.
“We want to get A.J. touches, we want to get Smitty (Devonta Smith) touches, we want to get Saquon touches, we want to get Dallas (Goedert) touches,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “That’s just the flow. I think that’s why you have to look at the big picture of the body of work that we’ve had so far as opposed to any in-game scenario.
“You’re doing everything you can do in-game to win. Now with that being said, of course we want to get Saquon the ball, but sometimes it’s getting him the ball through the pass game. Sometimes it’s through the running game, obviously more so through the running game with him because he’s a running back.”
Through five games a season ago, Barkley had carried the football 91 times for 482 yards and was averaging 5.3 yards per carry. He also had 14 catches for 92 yards. That meant he only had five more touches but 179 more yards from scrimmage.
He took on a much bigger load after that. Over the final 15 games, including the playoffs, he averaged 23 carries per game.
He was already in the midst of a good season when the Eagles went up to the Meadowlands for Barkley’s Week 6 homecoming. His former fans greeted him by burning their blue No. 26 Giants jerseys as Barkley rode through the MetLife Stadium parking lot on the Eagles’ team bus.
The running back responded by torching his former team for 176 yards on just 17 carries.
Eagles’ fans are hoping that version of Barkley resurfaces Sunday in the running back’s former stomping grounds.
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