Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley is a weapon that should scare any team he plays. The 27-year-old is just the ninth player in NFL history to rush for an eye-watering 2,000+ yards in a single season, and also topped the league in both rushing yards and carries for the 2024 regular season.
You can try to stop him, but … that’s just it. So far, defenses have only tried; they haven’t succeeded. And Philly quarterback Jalen Hurts knows. Asked Wednesday how the Birds’ offense accounts for teams “trying to take [Barkley] away,” Hurts offered an extremely simple and blunt response that gets at the heart of the running back’s impact and talent. “They try,” Hurts said. “… I don’t think that there’s been a game where he’s been taken away.”
“He’s a great player. And I think we complement each other well,” the QB continued. “And he’s been able to just get dirty yards, dirty yards, dirty yards. And soon enough, he pops one off. And so that’s been a big part of our success this year as a team.” Here’s a brief clip of that response (though you can watch the whole thing here, starting at 5:35):
Jalen wasn’t sugarcoating how hard it’s been to stop Saquon 😂 pic.twitter.com/KjqXu2tHq3
— NFL (@NFL) January 16, 2025
Hurts is not exaggerating. No one has managed to stop Barkley; indeed, of the 16 games he played this season, he topped 100 rushing yards in 11 of them. Last week, the first of the postseason, he tallied 111 yards against the Green Bay Packers. We’ll see how many he racks up this week against the Los Angeles Rams, who will travel to meet the Eagles at home in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs.
