Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley didn’t reveal when he would retire, but he did reveal how.
“So fast forward to however long you want to play, you’re one of the best ever, maybe the best ever,” Long said. “Do you want to be like an Aaron Donald...Or do you imagine yourself as one of these guys that wants to do it until the wheels fall off?”
“I‘ll probably be one of those guys that, it’ll be out of nowhere,” Barkley responded. “Like, I‘ll probably just wake up one day, whether it’s next year, or two years, or four years, and just be like ’yeah, it’s over.'”
Barkley said that his competitive nature comes out even when he is just playing cards or table games at his home, to the point where family games nearly erupt into physical fights.
He compared himself to NFL Hall of Famer Barry Sanders, whom he called his favorite player of all time, and said that like Sanders, he would be at the top of his game and simply decide to call it quits.
Barkley and Long also discussed the physical toll that playing the position takes.
“What’s it feel like, the morning after you take 30 carries?” Long asked.
“It’s kind of weird—some games you have 30 carries and wake up the next day and feel nothing,” Barkley replied. “I might go golf on Monday for active recovery. And there will be some games you have 10 to 15 touches and you feel like, ‘I can’t do nothing till Wednesday or Thursday.’ I think it’s more of, like, the team you play against and the physicality of the game that you were just a part of. It’s not so much necessarily the touches.”
Long also questioned Barkley if there is a part of the season that is harder for running backs to play in. Barkley said that late in the season was harder, but not because of the normal in-season wear and tear.
“Week one to week four, the tackling is not great, sloppy, the [defensive pursuit] angles aren’t great. Now, when you get to week 13 and everything’s on film, yeah, you really can’t hide. You’re going against a guy like [former Carolina Panthers linebacker] Luke Kuechly, like he knows when you’re running duo,” he said.
“You’ve got to dress it up in so many different ways. So later in the season it gets harder, because just the angles [are] better, the tackling is better... I had 60-yard touchdowns—I had like six or seven, and three to four of them came in the postseason...So not really so much having to do with the wear to your body, just the schemes and going against defenses and how they attack you.”
After rushing for 2,005 yards in 2024, setting the Eagles’ franchise record for scrimmage yards, and helping Philadelphia to a 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX, Barkley’s latest accomplishment was having his iconic backwards hurdle from the Eagles’ Week 9 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars immortalized on the cover of Madden 26 video game.
During the interview, Barkley expressed sympathy to Jaguars cornerback Jarrian Jones—over whom he hurdled—and commended the publishers for using a silhouetted player instead of piling on Jones.
“A main focus that we had, too... the play’s been shown enough. [Jones] probably took enough jabs [about] it, and we don’t need to try to bring any more attention to that. So obviously, we know what the play was, but Madden did a really good job, I felt like, of really focusing on the moment and the play itself rather [than] against the individual,” he said.
