Big Game Barkley comes up big for Eagles again: ‘This is what you dream about’

Ralph Vacchiano

NFL Reporter

PHILADELPHIA — In the dark days of his NFL career, when he was stuck on mostly bad teams in New York, Saquon Barkley never doubted that he was built for days like this. He always believed that in the right situation, on the right stage, with the right team around him, he was capable of truly special things.

“There’s so many variables that go into it,” Barkley said on Sunday evening. “The coaching, the scheme, the offensive line … I’d be crazy not to give them a shoutout and not to realize that. During those times and moments when things weren’t so great, I never lost faith.”

His faith and perseverance has now led him to this — perhaps his most special moment (so far) in his most special season. Barkley ran for a Philadelphia Eagles franchise-postseason-record 205 yards on Sunday with two perfectly timed long touchdown runs. In a game played in blizzard-like conditions, with the Eagles’ passing game out of sync, he powered them to a 28-22 win over the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round of the playoffs.

And now, next Sunday, in his first season in Philadelphia, he will play in his first NFC Championship Game, knowing he’s just one win away from the Super Bowl and getting a chance to realize all of his dreams.

“It feels amazing,” Barkley said, after coming in from the cold. “This is the reason why I came here. When me and my family went through the pros and cons and made lists of where we want to be, we felt like this would be the best opportunity to be able to play in games like this.”

Barkley, of course, never got much of a chance for games like this in New York. The Giants were mostly miserable in his tenure, losing 10 or more games in five of his six seasons and losing nearly twice as many games as they won (34-64-1). He was battered by injuries while being battered by mostly terrible offensive lines. His chances for success were slim. His chances for team success were mostly nonexistent.

His only respite was the 2022 season when he helped lead them to a 9-7-1 record and two playoff games. But he wasn’t the centerpiece of their attack. His short postseason resume consisted of just 18 carries over two games for 114 yards, which in hindsight seems like such a waste of a big player on a big stage.

So this is different because he’s everything to the Eagles — the most important weapon in their impressive arsenal. And it’s not just because he ran for 2,005 yards in 16 games during his MVP-caliber season. They knew from the day he arrived that he was the one they had to build their entire team around.

“It was probably the first week he got here,” Eagles guard Landon Dickerson said. “We weren’t even in pads or helmets. We were just in T-shirts running around. But watching him run and cut … I mean I had seen it playing (against the Giants). But I was like ‘Oh s–t, this guy’s for real.'”

And it didn’t take them much longer than that to know that Barkley wasn’t just a special talent — he was a special player, who had a knack for coming through in the big moments, rattling off huge plays at absolutely perfect times. They saw that twice against the Rams on Sunday — first when he gave the Eagles’ offense an early boost with a 62-yard touchdown run in the first quarter, and later when he ripped off a 78-yard touchdown to give the Eagles a two-score lead with 4:36 left in the game.

That actually should have been the end of it, but the Eagles nearly gave the game away, giving up a quick-strike touchdown drive to the Rams in the final minutes, then giving them the ball back and letting them drive again. The Rams actually got all the way to the Eagles’ 13 in the final minute, threatening to pull out a shocking victory, before a huge, third-down sack by Jalen Carter essentially put the game away.

But Carter wouldn’t have had his hero moment if Barkley hadn’t played the hero all game long, constantly plowing his way through a field covered in snow. He accounted for two-thirds of the Eagles’ offense — 232 total yards out of 350 — on a day when nobody else could get much of anything going. Jalen Hurts kept misfiring to his receivers and as the conditions worsened, it was clear the passing game just wasn’t going to work.

So Barkley just kept taking over — a perfect weapon on an imperfect day.

“Given the conditions, or not (with) any conditions, it doesn’t matter,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “It’s a luxury to have him, that’s for darned sure. He’s special.”

Dickerson added: “He’s just got an X-factor to him when it comes to any of these games and any of these situations. He can break one loose at any time. When he finds that little crease, he doesn’t need much. And when he does, it’s home run.”

Signing Barkley has been a grand slam home run for the Eagles all season long. Despite all the debate about the financial worth of running backs in the NFL, he’s made his three-year, $37.5 million contract with $26 million in guaranteed money look like one of the biggest bargains of the year.

And that’s not just because he keeps coming through for them, over and over again. It’s because he’s never content and he never stops working. He’s the rare player who seeks out greatness in great moments and embraces the pressure and the challenge. He actually looked up the Eagles postseason rushing record before coming into this game and knew it was the 196 yards that Steve Van Buren had in 1949.

It wasn’t just an interesting footnote for him. It became a realistic goal.

“Sometimes you chase greatness,” Barkley said. “You want to create a legacy. I wanted to have one of those types of games.”

He did. And now, of course, he wants another one. He wants to be the guy his team relies on next Sunday against the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship Game, when a trip to the Super Bowl is on the line. He’ll take the win regardless, of course, but he’s a great player who wants the great responsibility.

He is convinced that this is why he’s here, in this place, on this team, at this time. He is sure this is why his career worked out in a way that the star-crossed Giants didn’t want to re-sign him while the star-studded Philadelphia Eagles did.

These are the kinds of moments he’s always believed he was built for, even during the darkest times, even when he was injured, even when he kept losing so many more games than he won.

And there’s no doubt in his mind that given these opportunities, there’s no chance he’d ever let his team down.

“This is what you dream about,” Barkley said. “This is why I came to Philly. I wanted to be part of games like this.”

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.