How much should the Eagles worry about wear and tear on Saquon Barkley?

It’s no secret that the Philadelphia Eagles are making Saquon Barkley work for his money. His 411 carries (so far) this season are the most by any running back in the NFL since DeMarco Murray’s 436 carries in 2014. 

It’s a crazy workload, but not all running back carries are created equal. And that’s especially true with Saquon. This is a guy who will just as soon lower his shoulder into somebody as he will jump over them. This is a guy who will take three runs into the guts of a defense and then break one on the outside for 30 yards. As versatile as Saquon is as a player, the way he gets tackled (or doesn’t) is just as varied.

Saquon has been so good that it might keep him healthy

I went back and watched all 411 of Saquon’s carries just to see how every play ended and categorized every tackle based purely on how they looked. No slow motion and no zoom. Just how it looked at full speed. The general idea was to not overthink it. Look at it once and record the initial thought, kind of like a word association. Sometimes a couple of views were necessary if the tackle was a little bit mucky.

These are the different categories of tackles that I used:

Big hits are a little different with Saquon. He never got hit so hard that his shoes fell off or he stayed on the ground in visible pain. That makes sense when you think about it: It’s his seventh year in the NFL so he knows how to get hit, he’s incredibly talented, and he makes guys miss. So big hits for him are more hits that make you say, ‘Woof. That looked like it hurt.’

Medium hits were tricky. A lot of them were if Saquon got hit by one guy and another one came in to make the stop, or if he just got stuck by one single guy (which didn’t happen often). This is like if Saquon spins out of a tackle and then there’s another guy who gets him to the ground. They’re the kinds of tackles that will definitely get him on the ground, and those have to be solid tackles.

Tackles where he got slung to the ground and where he got stood up are pretty self-explanatory. Most of the plays where he got slung to the ground were when someone was able to tackle him in the open field.

Plays where he got tripped are where someone gets him below the waist to bring him down. It could be a guy coming straight at him and going low, or someone getting him from behind.

I counted plays where he falls down as plays where he either initiated contact with someone and landed on top of them, slipped, ran into his own guy, or specifically the fumble in the Jacksonville game that definitely wasn’t an actual fumble. These are also plays where he was on the ground and someone made forcible contact with him and not plays where someone just touches him down.

Plays where he got crushed are what they sound like. Think of it like a typical running play where a running back gets smooshed between multiple defenders and there’s a little bit of a dog pile. I also counted ones where two or three guys get him in an open space and smoosh him into the ground. It’s really just gang tackles.

And then there are plays where no one tackled him, like his breakaway touchdowns or when he’s shoved out of bounds but stays on his feet.

Now, the only person who knows how much wear and tear, torque, and pain Saquon feels from each hit is Saquon himself. That being said, the eye test is pretty good for telling if something hurts. 

Twisting his legs or smacking his head on the ground, is much worse than if he is lowered relatively slowly onto the ground in a pile. Even that though, can be gruesome. Jason Kelce always said that the Brotherly Shove was the hardest play because of how exhausting it was.

The big and medium tackles are the tackles that have consistently higher impact and have assumedly higher wear and tear. The crunch, slung-down, and trip tackles are inconsistently impactful, but after watching them all back-to-back, more of them seemed to be on the lower side of that scale. The fall down, stood up, and no tackles are consistently low-impact.  

These are the numbers, and they’re ranked from tackles that look like they have the most wear and tear, to the least (if you want the game-by-game breakdown, that chart is at the bottom).

That doesn’t seem too bad at all for a running back who’s carried the ball 411 times and run 1.4 miles. 

20 percent of his carries ended in either very low impact or no impact and 20 percent ended in a higher impact. That leaves 60 percent of the tackles in that middle ground, and again, most looked more clean than gnarly.

On top of that, Saquon does a great job taking himself out of the game when he needs to. He doesn’t exhaust himself and get sloppy. Sloppy running leads to less speed and bad cuts. Less speed and bad cuts lead to more hits and a higher risk of injuries. He stays fresh and plays his game.

Aside from the sheer number of steps that Saquon has actually taken this year, the 411 carries isn’t so terrible. He hasn’t missed any prolonged time from injuries and he’s currently on his third bye week. That’s pretty good for a guy who has a very real chance to break the record for rushing yards in a single season including the postseason. He just needs to get a good massage gun and a good foot bath, and he’ll be as good as new.