Philadelphia Eagles star running back Saquon Barkley is fresh off of a career season and a Super Bowl win, and he sees that only as the beginning at age 28.
Running backs usually fall off around age 30, and Barkley carried a heavy workload last season of 345 carries and 33 receptions. Barkley is taking steps in offseason workouts to make sure he doesn’t flame out and has years ahead of dominant football.
“You’ve just got to be smarter, right? You have your moments where you go in there and you grind, you push it,” Barkley said. “But the majority of those days is just mobility, conditioning, doing all the things to get your body in shape to perform at a high level. It was a lot of workload [last year], but my body feels great, so that’s the most important thing.”
Barkley is also heeding the advice he has received from his coaches and former NFL running back greats. The former Penn State star knows well that other star running backs have seen a decline around his age.
“It wasn’t hard because everyone I trust told me basically to sit my [expletive] down for a little bit,” Barkley said.
Barkley’s 2024 season was one of the best ever, amid 2,005 yards rushing and 13 touchdowns plus 278 yards receiving and two scores. He finished eighth for the most yards all-time, but that’s because Barkley sat out the Week 18 game where the Eagles rested players with the No. 1 seed in the playoffs locked up.
Otherwise, Barkley looked poised to pass Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson’s record of 2,105 yards set in 1984 when NFL teams played 16 games. In addition to the regular season workload, Barkley had another 91 carries for 499 yards and five touchdowns plus 13 receptions for 75 yards in the postseason Super Bowl run.
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni wants another season of Barkley like that, so his staff is carefully regulating his workload, along with other players. The Eagles have played seven playoff games over the past three seasons, which takes a toll.
Getting Ready for Tougher Defense
Barkley is also aware the opponents will be aiming to shut him down this season. Overcoming that will be key for the Eagles, which went 5–2 when Barkley didn’t make it to 100 yards or more in a game.“Where we’re at in the playbook right now is we’re trying to get everything ironed out,” Barkley said. “But whatever it looks like, that’s what it’s going to look like and the most important thing is winning football games.”
“If we’ve got to adapt and look at things in a different way, then we’re all willing to do that,” Barkley added. “And if we have to win in the same way, we’re all willing to do that, too. That’s the stuff you build in training camp when you grow with each other, but the most important thing is winning football games.
Eagles Seek Rare Feat
Barkley and company have a break now until training camp in July when the defending champions get ready for another run. The Eagles can become the first team to repeat since the Kansas City Chiefs did it in the 2022 and 2023 seasons.Two repeat champions in the same decade hasn’t happened since the 1990s when both the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos accomplished it. The only other decade to have repeat champions was when the Pittsburgh Steelers did it twice in the 1970s.
