Saquon Barkley was the missing piece for the Philadelphia Eagles. I'm old enough to remember when the pervasive narrative around Barkley's signing was "damn, they paid how much?" The NFL has largely moved away from pricey, multi-year contracts for the running back position, but Barkley was the exception to the rule.
He finished the regular season with 345 carries for 2,005 yards and 13 touchdowns, with another 278 yards and two touchdowns through the air. He continued apace in the playoffs and was essential to Philadelphia's second-ever Super Bowl title. In the regular season and the playoffs combined, Barkley tallied 436 carries for 2,504 yards — an NFL record.
While Barkley put his name in rarefied air last season, but also put his production for next season in jeopardy. We know Barkley is the exception to the rule in many ways, but it's hard to break with historical precedent. And folks, when a running back incurs the level of usage Barkley did last season, it be can difficult to repeat those numbers in the following campaign.
This is something Dallas Cowboys (and Eagles) fans know all too well.
History is not on Saquon Barkley's side after dominant 2024 campaign
The last running back to log over 400-plus carries in a single campaign was DeMarco Murray with the Cowboys in 2014. He was a year younger than Barkley, but Dallas still let him walk the following season. He went, as fate would have it, to the Eagles. Murray followed up 392 regular season carries and 1,845 yards with 193 carries for 702 yards, averaging 3.6 yards per carry with the Eagles compared to 4.7 yards per carry in his top-3 MVP campaign with Dallas.
The Athletic charted 11 running backs to eclipse 400-plus carries in a season since 2000. Only one (Shaun Alexander in 2006) even reached 300 carries in the next season. All went from top-3 fantasy running backs to 15th-best or worse the following year. That is not the end all, be all for measuring running back success of course, but overall output tends to decline sharply for a running back after a season like the one Barkley just had.
This is a new age of football medicine and Barkley is a superhuman force, so maybe none of this matters and he picks up right where he left off. But even with a stout Eagles offensive line protecting him, it's hard to imagine Barkley mirroring his 2024 production without any bumps in the road. It's so difficult to maintain that level of usage in the NFL. It's why we see teams build out committees and scale back older running backs. It's also why Ezekiel Elliott, Dalvin Cook and others hit a wall.
The Eagles rewarded Barkley with a two-year, $41.2 million extension, with $36 million guaranteed. He's the first NFL running back to earn more than $20 million annually and he can also receive up to $15 million in incentives and escalators, per ESPN.
We should all know enough to generally trust Howie Roseman — and to not question whether or not Barkley is "overpaid." Buuuuuuuuut. If the arc of history proves correct, Barkley is going to decline. Not necessarily to the point where he's unplayable or his contract becomes an albatross. But we probably shouldn't expect back-to-back seasons in which Barkley is a legitimate MVP candidate. That basically never happens.