Saquon Barkley knows there's a lot of noise surrounding him right now.
The growing list of 100-plus yard rushing days on the year, the game-breaking runs, the backwards hurdle, and all his other highlights from so far this season, the star running back arrived to the Eagles and captured the heart of Philadelphia almost instantly, and in the larger football world, is rapidly shifting the MVP conversation.
But he's trying to stay steady through it, Barkley told the media huddled around his locker at the NovaCare Complex on Wednesday. The talk is all good now in Philadelphia, but back in New York with the Giants, it's been bad before, too.
Barkley can't control the talk. He knows that, and he knows it's a waste to get caught up in it.
But he is aware that it's out there, and he's aware of this: the Eagles' single-season rushing record is very much within reach, and if everything keeps going as well as it has, the all-time NFL record set by Eric Dickerson might be, too.
Barkley is at 1,499 yards rushing. The Eagles' record set by LeSean McCoy in 2013 is 1,607. Dickerson's all-time record set in 1984 with the L.A. Rams is 2,105. The Eagles have five games left beginning this week back at home against Carolina, which has the worst run defense in the league.
There's a very real shot at history here.
"I'm well aware of it," Barkley said, going on to explain that he took himself on a bit of an Eagles history lesson after he signed with the team back in March.
"Once I got here, I looked up the history of the Eagles' running backs. I wasn't familiar with Wilbert Montgomery, so I even got to do a dive on him and learn about him, [Brian Westbrook] and Shady…That's your goal," Barkley said. "You want to come in here, you want to leave a legacy on a place, on a franchise. I had the same mindset when I was in New York. Sadly, that came up short."
But with Philadelphia, everything has been different.
It's not Thanksgiving anymore, but Saquon is still eating today 😮💨@saquon | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/iN0zg8Tnei
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) December 2, 2024
Behind one of the league's strongest offensive lines – between Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata, Cam Jurgens, Landon Dickerson, and a rejuvenated Mehki Becton – Barkley has taken off.
Offensively, he's the reason the Eagles have been able to close out a lot of games late throughout their current eight-game winning streak, or in a few other cases, just flat-out run away with them.
He gashed his old team for 176 yards and a score at the Meadowlands during a 28-3 pummeling of the Giants in Week 7, and took a backward leap over the Jaguars a couple of weeks prior that still has the Delaware Valley watching the clip on loop. He buried the Commanders with back-to-back touchdown runs all within 30 seconds in Week 11, scorched the Rams out in L.A. for a franchise-record and career-best 255 yards in the Week 12 rout, then broke free for the 25-yard TD run late into last week that put an AFC-favored Baltimore team away.
That legacy is being built fast.
The Eagles might have never had a running back as talented, dynamic, or explosive as Barkley. And Philadelphia might not have seen a football player as electrifying or as game-changing as him maybe since Randall Cunningham.
Just take a walk through the Christmas Village at City Hall right now. Prints, paintings, and shirts of the backwards hurdle are all over the shops.
And the Eagles, behind Barkley, they've just kept rolling, with overall play that only seems to get stronger by the game and a 10-2 record that's keeping them in a race with the Lions for the NFC's top seed in the playoffs.
That's the part that's really driving Barkley forward right now, as nice and as near as those records are.
"Yeah, I'm aware of that, but that's not the driving factor of it," Barkley said. "The driving factor is to win football games, put ourselves in a position to make a run, and go win it all."
But he just might make history along the way. There's a real shot at it.
"I'm aware of the things I can accomplish," Barkley said. "But the way I accomplish that is by sticking to the script."
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