Last year, Eagles running back Saquon Barkley had a season for the ages. It hasn’t aged well.
This season, his numbers are down. Way down. He addressed the situation on Thursday, in advance of a Sunday rematch against the Giants.
“I’m not really a big numbers guy,” Barkley said, via Zach Berman of TheAthletic.com. “Wasn’t really good at numbers in school, either. People use numbers — what’s the saying, men lie, women lie, numbers don’t? I don’t really get caught up in that. I don’t think it defines me as a player. I still know what I bring to the table. But I do know we have to be more efficient in the running game. That’s something we’re focused on. But at the end of the day, our whole goal is to go 6-2 and win another football game. Whatever that looks like, that’s what matter.”
He’s right about that. Still, the numbers aren’t good.
Barkley is averaging 3.3 yards per rushing attempt. Via NBC Sports research, that puts him at 37th out of 38 players with 50 or more carries this season entering Week 8.
“Coming into the season, I said it’s going to look different,” Barkley said. “I wish it didn’t look like this right now, but we’re winning football games. . . . I bet you this point last year, you flip it — our pass game wasn’t where we wanted it to be, but we were running it like crazy. And it was like, how do we get the pass game going?”
This year, the question is how do they get the run game going? How do they get Barkley going?
Again, they’re winning. At some point, however, it will catch up with them, unless they fix it.