Sirianni on his approach to Barkley pursuing NFL's single-season rushing record
Nick Sirianni joins the 94WIP Morning Show
Nick Sirianni was asked about balancing Saquon Barkley's health vs. trying to help him break the NFL single-season rushing record.
"You think of the health of your guys Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday," Sirianni told Joe DeCamara and Jon Ritchie on Wednesday's 94WIP Morning Show. "You do everything you can do to win the football game. When you start to think about records and things like that, you think about that near the end of the season[...]There's so much more football to play. We've always thought like that of, 'Hey who's the guy who's close to a record this and that?' Because you want them to get it."
Sirianni explained how the team approached DeVonta Smith breaking the Eagles' all-time rookie record for receiving yards in a season in 2021.
"Now we didn't think about that four, five weeks before hand," Sirianni said of Smith's 916 yard rookie season. "We thought about it that week and we said, 'Throw him the first couple balls'—and then we got him out of there.
"These records are cool," Sirianni continued. "These are special, they're fun to be a part of and so you're always trying to do that for the guys. But you don't think about it in advance, I don't think that's good business. All you're trying to do is win each and every game. Shoot, if Saquon is running the ball like he is now we're having a chance to win. And so those things will take care of themselves."
Barkley rushed for a career-high 255 yards on 26 carries in Sunday night's Eagles' win over the Rams, their seventh straight victory. It was the ninth-best rushing performance in NFL history.
Barkley now has 1,392 rushing yards, already a career-high, through only 11 games this season. He needs 715 rushing yards in his final six games to beat Eric Dickerson's all-time mark of 2,106 rushing yards in a season.
