It has been a season of dreams for the Philadelphia Eagles, advancing to the NFC Championship game after taking down the Los Angeles Rams in the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs, with hopes of reaching the Super Bowl. They will have to get past the Cinderella Washington Commanders in order to get there, but the Eagles have one thing that Washington does not, and that is superstar RB Saquon Barkley, who is having one of the greatest individual seasons we have ever seen a player have.
In that game against the Rams, Barkley set a new Eagles franchise playoff record with 205 rushing yards, ripping L.A. for several huge downfield scampers that iced the game for Philadelphia. That mark was also the fifth most all time in an NFL Playoff game.
According to Tim McManus at ESPN, Barkley passed a franchise mark for most rushing yards in a playoff game set by Steve Van Buren (196) in 1949, also against the Rams. Barkley now has the third-most rushing yards in a season, including playoffs, in NFL history with 2,329. He trails only Terrell Davis' marks of 2,331 yards in 1997 and 2,476 yards in 1998.
Considering that he has a possible two games left if they manage to take down the Commanders this coming weekend as a -6.5 favorite, it seems almost inevitable that he would break the record for most rushing yards in a single season including playoffs. He has been nearly unstoppable on the ground, joining Eric Dickerson as the only players to have a 200-yard rushing game in the regular season and one in the playoffs in their career.
Barkley admitted that he actually looked up the Eagles record for most rushing yards in a postseason game, and wanted to break it for the sake of “chasing greatness” as he says. "I felt like I had a good game last week," he said, per ESPN, "but you want to create a legacy, and I wanted to have one of those types of games. Just visualizing stuff and wondering what the number is. It's funny how that happened."
His next challenge might be one of the softest ones yet, as Washington ranked 30th against the rush this season. In his two meetings with the Commanders this season, Barkley went off, but he did that in nearly every game to be fair to them. He rushed for 146 yards in their first meeting back in November, and 150 in the second meeting a month later. That is nearly 300 yards on the ground in two games against Washington. It would be a major surprise if they managed to stop him from getting close to those numbers again here.
Interestingly, despite how well Barkley performed, the Eagles went 1-1 in those two games and split the season series. It is no secret that Philadelphia’s offense has been very reliant on him, with QB Jalen Hurts struggling at times, so defenses have been loading the box. I’m sure Washington will once again, but it hasn’t shown to really help in quelling Barkley’s dominance.
We know one thing is certain, however. The New York Giants really must be sad right now.
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