After an unforeseen delay on Thursday, Joe DeCamara and Jon Ritchie finally got the king endorsement of #BacksForBarkley from the all-time rushing leader himself, Eric Dickerson!
As you probably expected, Dickerson, whose rushing-record season was usurped by Dan Marino winning MVP, he is 1000 percent in favor of Barkley as the NFL MVP.
“Most definitely – and I almost feel that they ought to have a different award for the quarterbacks, because they're gonna give it to a quarterback almost every year and it’s almost unfair,” Dickerson said. “A back would almost have to have 2,800 yards and win the Super Bowl to be an MVP in today's league because it's all about the passing game.
And, what Dickerson’s seeing in Saquon the Eagle is indeed different than his first five years as a Giant.
“When he went to the Giants, I felt bad for him because he’d never reach his potential there. They didn’t have the help he needs as a running back, the guys up front and a quarterback tat believes in running the football,” Dickerson said. “I’m not big on vision, it’s the feel of the game, and I didn’t realize how fast he is and how he just feels it. As a running back, when you walk to the line of scrimmage and see eight or nine guys, it’s hard, because six can’t block eight or nine. A lot of things have to go right for you to have 2,000 yards.”
But after a little talk about Saquon’s game and how Dickerson’s game would translate to today’s game, we got to the downside of the conversation: when it comes to 2,105, Dickerson does NOT want Saquon to get to that total this year and break his NFL single-season rushing record.
“No, I don’t want my record broken. If he breaks it, he breaks it, and I'm not gonna lose sleep over it,” Dickerson said, “but when I broke that record, I didn’t have kids at the time, but I said, if anyone breaks it, I’d like my son to break it. That would be the ultimate gift to me if my son, who is 12, did it. But Saquon’s a great back, and I love seeing him play with a great team and loving football again.”
Saquon needs 607 yards in five games – an average of 121 and change per – to do it, but it won’t be easy, because the pressure both inside and outside is going to mount.
“One thing is the pressure you put on yourself to break that record, because your teammates want you to break it – my offensive line wanted it bad – and from the media and the pressure you put on yourself,” Dickerson said. “And when I played, teams were like, you’re not breaking the record on us and put us in the history books!”
If Saquon does break it though, well, Dickerson doesn’t have any issues with the fact that it will have come in a longer season.
“That’s life; things change, the game changes and they play more games,” Dickerson said. “It’s so hard to get there still. My goal every year I played was to have 1,500 yards; that’s when I thought I was having a good year, and anything under was not okay. I had high standards for myself, I really did, and it was hard to attain, but I thank God he gave me the talent to do it.”
Take a listen to all of Dickerson’s fantastic call-in above!