Following the Eagles' fifth straight loss Monday, star RB Saquon Barkley said he still believes the Birds can win this season. Does upper management agree?
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Saquon Barkley is trying to will the Eagles to win but can only do so much.
Bill Streicher/Imagn Images via Reuters Connect
Saquon Barkley found the hole he'd been looking so long for, hit it hard, then put on the jets for his longest run since Week 1, which must have felt like an eternity for the star Eagles running back.
But he couldn't even be happy about it.
"To be honest, I wanted no part of a long run," Barkley said afterward. "I didn't want to try to expose my hamstring to a long run in the moment, but of course that's kind of how it happened."
And that about sums up 2026 for the Eagles, who shook off a nice opening TD drive to eventually lapse back into a struggling, laboring team that lost for the fifth straight time, a 38-21 defeat to the rival Cowboys at home on prime time.
It came down to this: Their best offensive player, perhaps the most explosive and dynamic ball carrier in the league, was actually hoping to not be explosive and dynamic as he returned nowhere near full strength from a hamstring injury that shelved him the past two games.
Unironically, Barkley also felt a pull in his back at the end of the run, perhaps when he nearly got tripped up by a diving tackle attempt around midfield that slowed him down just enough to prevent Dallas from allowing a 63-yard TD just three snaps into the Eagles' first possession.
Barkley would only touch the ball eight more times, spending long portions of the game on the sideline cheering on teammates, or on the exercise bike trying to keep his back and hammy from tightening up.
"The hamstring came out great," Barkley said. "The back just locked up on me."
The locker room following the team's longest losing streak in a decade was typically quiet and solemn as midnight approached, and as they were unknowingly being trolled by the Cowboys, who waltzed into the visitors' locker room with Meek Mill's "Dreams and Nightmares" – the signature tune from the Eagles' 2017 Super Bowl run – blaring in the background.
Quiet, except for the area where Barkley stood in front of his locker, doing his best to speak a sudden, I-told-you-so turnaround into existence despite plenty of evidence that this Eagles team is incapable of pulling that off.
Barkley addressed the team in the locker room after the game, then delivered a similar message to the cameras and microphones surrounding him.
"I feel like you just never quit, you never give up, keep fighting, no matter what the situation is, how it looks," he said. "And I feel like that we have the men in the locker room to do it. We put ourselves in this situation. Now we gotta dig ourselves out of it.
"I know I've got to take more of a role of being vocal, use my voice. I'm more of a lead by example guy, but it happens when you have guys banged up – a guy like Jalen [Hurts] was really like the vocal leader. It's going to take me and Jordan [Mailata] to fill that void. We are working our ass off. It sucks when the results aren't going the way you want it to go. But I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I really have bought into the mindset you just gotta keep believing in the process, keep working and keep going."
It is painfully obvious that Barkley is willing to fight the good fight and that he truly believes these Eagles can defy the odds and reverse course over the next few weeks to get back into some kind of contention.
He even referenced the 2021 Eagles team that battled back from 2-5 in Nick Sirianni's first season to finish seven of its next 10 to make the playoffs, which Barkley observed firsthand while playing for the rival Giants.
"I'm not looking too far down the road, but I've seen seasons like this flip," he insisted. "It just takes one win, just one time to get that confidence. That's all it takes – just one."
Barkley might still believe, but the question he and his teammates will have to confront soon is if management's feeling is mutual.
Had they figured out how to beat an awful Dallas team that tried to give away the game in the first 30 minutes, the Eagles could perhaps have viewed their 3-4 record more optimistically, with potentially winnable games against the Commanders and Giants on deck.
You might have to squint a little, but you could have seen a pathway to an above .500 record going into the Week 10 bye, then with games against the lowly Colts and Cardinals along with three division rematches in the second half remaining to potentially find 10 wins, another NFC East title and who knows what from there.
But not only did the Eagles lose again Monday, they were whitewashed in the second half, steamrolled by a previously dormant Dallas run game and woefully one-dimensional on offense after halftime.
They were outclassed by a team that's made a living off being outclassed for about three decades.
There is no obvious and apparent pathway to victory over anyone if the Eagles continue to play the way they did Monday night, and with the Nov. 10 trade deadline fast approaching, the Eagles might have blown their last shot to convince trigger-happy Howie Roseman to either buy or stand pat.
The Eagles will have several enticing commodities for Roseman to shop during the next few weeks, and even an unforeseen two-game win streak might not be enough to convince the NFL's two-time GM of the year to stiff-arm future assets, not after Monday's 17-point loss meant that the Eagles couldn't be anything better than 4-5 at the deadline.
Unfortunately for the person who's preaching perseverance and belief the loudest, he is also the same person who could bring back the sweetest return on the market, but Barkley isn't buying that the Birds are about to become sellers.
He was asked about the deadline and if it would weigh on him and others.
'"I don't think ...," he said with a long pause. "From my understanding, we are still in this. And we believe that in this locker room. I know we might be laughed at, and you guys are going to write this and write that, but like I said until it's statistically over ... I believe we are gonna turn this around, and no one can tell me anything else."
Does management agree?
"I feel like that, too," Barkley said.
Maybe he's right, maybe he's in denial, or maybe it's blissful ignorance. Perhaps it's his way of presenting a stoic face at a time when the locker room desperately needs it.
But the reality is that this sudden about-face that Barkley keeps promising will happen needed to start happening Monday night, and needed to offer some semblance of hope that these Eagles can mount an unpredictable comeback.
Instead, they only offered the opposite. And time for convincing might have just run out.
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