For a moment, Jared Verse thought he had him.
After he shed his blocker in the third quarter last Sunday at SoFi Stadium, Verse, the Los Angeles Rams linebacker, lunged at running back Saquon Barkley. But instead of tackling his opponent, he only grabbed air.
By the time Verse got up off the field, Barkley, the Philadelphia Eagles superstar, was already past defenders and on his way to a 72-yard touchdown run. It was just one brilliant moment in a game of brilliant moments for Barkley, who finished with 255 yards rushing and two scores to go along with four catches for 47 yards in a 37-20 win.
“I’ve never seen a running back like that,” Verse said after the game.
What players marveled at that night — speed, strength, lateral movement, vision — are what Philadelphia fans have grown accustomed to all year. Barkley (1,392 yards in 11 games so far) is on pace to break the NFL’s all-time mark for rushing yards in a season, set by Eric Dickerson in 1984 (2,105). He looks every bit the missing piece for a 9-2 Eagles team that has come up short of its Super Bowl aspirations in recent years.It makes you think: Why would a team allow him to leave?
That question is what New York Giants fans have been asking themselves since Barkley for their division rival in March. And they aren’t the only ones questioning their team’s executives.
While Barkley is a leading candidate for NFL MVP, other veteran ball carriers, like Derrick Henry (whose Baltimore Ravens play the Eagles on Sunday at 4:25 p.m.), Houston’s Joe Mixon and Green Bay’s Josh Jacobs, are all enjoying career seasons with new franchises.
Their success has general managers around the league wondering whether the long-held belief that older running backs shouldn’t be paid massive contracts is still correct. Are Barkley, Henry, Mixon and Jacobs the start of something new, or are they outliers?
It’s not a shock that teams historically prefer to move on after a rookie deal. The longer players are in the league, the more wear and tear their bodies suffer, with a higher likelihood of production drop-off. That is especially true at running back, one of the most injury-prone positions in the league. ESPN’s Tristan Cockcroft confirmed the notion ahead of last season from a fantasy football perspective.
“Among those who debuted since 2000, running backs experienced a 25.2% decline in PPR points per game, and 37.0% in total PPR points scored, from their age-28 to age-29 seasons,” he said. “Only 11 running backs have reached their age-28 and 29 seasons since 2010 and the group saw a 16.8% decline in PPR points per game going from ages 26 to 27, 8.4% decline going from 27 to 28 and a 15.3% decline going from 28 to 29.”
The Giants, a rebuilding team as it was, didn’t want to commit a large part of their salary cap to an aging running back who just a few years ago tore an ACL. They could have signed Barkley to a multiyear deal or franchise-tagged him for $12.1 million. But with many other needs, they chose not to pay their star and allowed him to become a free agent.
In a now-famous episode of HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” New York general manager Joe Schoen told owner John Mara they would let him hit the open market.
“In a perfect world I would still like to have him back,” Mara said of Barkley. “Until we can prove that we can have a decent offense without him …”
Quarterback “Daniel [Jones] is making a lot of money,” Schoen said. “We got to figure out if he’s the guy, so we got to protect him. We need to put resources there.”
Mara later told Schoen that he’s “going to have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia.”
Barkley would, in fact, go on to sign with the Eagles on a three-year, $37.75 million deal, and he has been nearly unstoppable. The Giants replaced him with free agent Devin Singletary and rookie Tyron Tracy, but at 2-10 they are among the NFL’s worst teams. New York also just released Jones.
Baltimore’s Henry, meanwhile, is on a similar trajectory to Barkley’s. After eight seasons in Tennessee, Henry, 30, signed a two-year, $16 million deal to join Lamar Jackson and Co.
So far, so good.
Henry leads the NFL in touchdowns (13), ranks No. 2 in yards (1,325) and is a crucial member of the league’s most prolific offense.
Behind Barkley and Henry on the rushing leaders list is Jacobs, who signed a four-year, $48 million deal with the Packers after five years with the Las Vegas Raiders. In last week’s game, he had 106 yards rushing and three touchdowns in a huge win against the San Francisco 49ers. And you can’t forget about Mixon, the former Cincinnati Bengals running back who was traded to the Texans in March in exchange for a 2024 seventh-round draft pick. He has put up monster numbers with his new team, ranking in the top 10 in both yards (786) and touchdowns (10) despite having missed multiple games with a high ankle sprain earlier in the year. He has failed to find the end zone in only two games.
“I feel great to be appreciated here and to play a big part in what we do,” Mixon told NBC Sports in September. “I’m [going to] do whatever is asked of me as a player … be the best teammate and leader that I know how to be. I’m just happy that I’m on this side now.”
The immediate success of those running backs, at the very least, makes the decision for teams to pay up on new contracts harder. Ask Giants fans — they would back up the Brinks truck for Barkley in a heartbeat.
Barkley says he’s “thankful for the fresh start.”
“Me and my family, my fiancée, had a conversation of ‘I think this is a spot where I can kind of rewrite my story. I feel like I can show everyone what type of player that I can be and was meant to be,’” he said. “It’s working out right now.”
