Saquon Barkley looked at a loss standing at his locker.
The Eagles had just imploded to the rival Dallas Cowboys, 24-21.
They had jumped out to a three-touchdown lead to start, but the Philadelphia offense stalled out (again) and just couldn't get that last score to fully bury the Cowboys. The defense, meanwhile, couldn't hold it all together and keep bailing the team out again and again down to the final whistle.
The Eagles crumbled under a run of 24 unanswered points from the Cowboys. Their luck from the past couple of weeks ran out, and in disastrous fashion.
And throughout, Barkley continued to struggle, this time to a new low.
The star running back, who was the rushing champ and an ever-constant threat to take off for a big play last season, carried the ball 10 times for just 22 yards in Sunday's loss down in Arlington.
His longest run of the game was for seven yards, and while he did rack up 52 receiving yards on seven catches, one of his later grabs during a rapidly melting down fourth quarter ended with Dallas edge rusher Sam Williams swatting the ball out of his grasp for a lost fumble in a crucial spot.
There's been little working for Barkley, who was once again running into walls at the line of scrimmage with seemingly every handoff. And there's been little working for the Eagles' offense, which was defined by a dominant run game on the way to the Super Bowl a year ago, but now only seems to be growing more predictable and more ineffective with every passing week.
And after Sunday, Barkley just looked at a loss for answers. He didn't want to fall back on any excuses either.
"I'm not getting the run game going," Barkley told the group of reporters and cameramen huddled around him postgame. "I'm not getting yards, and I'm tired of the excuse of people trying to stop our run game. I don't really subscribe to that. Just gotta be better and gotta make plays."
Saquon-Barkley-Run-4th-QTR-Eagles-Cowboys-Week-12-NFL-2025.jpgKevin Jairaj/Imagn Images
Opposing defenses have put added pressure on Saquon Barkley going back to the Super Bowl in February.
In fairness, the Eagles' offensive issues are all over the place now, and leave a lot for head coach Nick Sirianni and offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo to answer for on a short week.
But the Eagles' bread and butter since Sirianni took over as the coach has been their run game, and when Barkley signed with the team ahead of last year, it jumped to another level – a record-breaking and championship-winning kind of one.
Now it can barely even get started.
Sunday's loss was Barkley's worst rushing output of the season, and the fifth game out of 11 so far where he ran for less than 50 yards.
He's only gone above 100 yards once this season, in Week 8 against the Giants, and is at 662 yards for the year after Sunday on 175 carries, at an average of 3.8 yards per carry.
Through 11 games last season, Barkley was at 1,392 rushing yards on 223 carries, at a rate of 6.2 yards per run. He was producing unreal highlights and home-run plays every week, and the NFL's single-season rushing record, up until the end, looked seriously attainable.
Barkley, and the elite offensive line that created the holes in front of him, were simply unstoppable.
Heading into this season, though, most knew that Barkley was unlikely to replicate 2024's enormous success. The collective history of running backs who enjoyed similar record seasons suggested a dropoff would follow the year after, and after the Chiefs prioritized stacking up the box in the Super Bowl to ensure that anyone else but Barkley would beat them, it was expected that most other teams would take to the same idea.
They did. He knew it was coming, and the Eagles knew just as well, too. Yet they've kept sending him to run into walls, and even when he has found an opening, he just hasn't been able to cut through that second level of tacklers with the same kind of burst.
Then on Sunday against Dallas, he went next to nowhere, all as the Eagles fell apart.
"Just didn't play good," Barkley said. "Didn't play even close to good, to be honest."
No one on the Eagles really did by the end.
"It's not on Saquon," left tackle Jordan Mailata insisted postgame. "It's on all of us. You can just watch the film. We always say we're one block away, and as tiring and as repetitive as that is, that is the truth.
"I'm tired of saying it, but it starts with us. We gotta do a better job of execution, and until we do that, this running game's not going anywhere."
Even so, Barkley stood there shouldering the blame, and looked at a loss coming up with the answers for how to fix it.
"I'm a big believer that the run game starts with me and ends with me," he said. "So I'm in a little funk right now. I've had funks like this before. Just gotta break it, and the only way I know how is by flushing this, working my butt off, and getting ready for my next opportunity."
This season was never going to be the same as 2024 – not for Barkley, not for the run game, and not for the Eagles' offense on the whole – and it's too late into the schedule now to start putting up the numbers that would come anywhere close to it.
Still, Barkley should be far, far better than just 22 yards rushing, and the Eagles should be far, far better than whatever they smouldered into by the end of Sunday.
Yet here we are.
"The plays aren't happening, and that's all on me," Barkley said. "I just gotta make plays."
Saquon-Barkley-Space-Eagles-Cowboys-Week-12-NFL-2025.jpgKevin Jairaj/Imagn Images
Can Saquon Barkley find a way to make the big plays again down the home stretch of the season?
SIGN UP HERE to receive the PhillyVoice Sports newsletter
Follow Nick on Twitter:@itssnick
Follow Nick on Bluesky: @itssnick
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports