Saquon Barkley ran for 167 yards on 31 carries in the 41-7 win against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon. He’s an NFC East champion for the first time.

The Eagles are now locked into the #2 seed, making the Week 18 home game against the New York Giants irrelevant, though Barkley can break Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record if he puts up 101 yards in the finale.

Notable is the fact that Dickerson set the record during a 16-game season in 1984, overtaking O.J. Simpson, who only played 14 games in 1973. Saquon has the benefit of 17 games to do it, but here’s a closer look at the numbers after 16:

  • Dickerson: 379 carries, 2,105 yards, 5.6 yards per carry, 131.6 yards per game
  • Barkley: 345 carries, 2,005 yards, 5.8 yards per carry, 125.3 yards per game

Saquon actually has the better yards per carry number. Dickerson benefited from 34 more rushing attempts. If you make up for the difference by multiplying Barkley’s 5.8 YPC times 34 carries, he would be at 2,202 yards with the same volume as Dickerson.

The point of bringing this up is that you can look at their production in a number of ways. You can keep it simple and talk about “the record” and ignore total games, YPC, and rushing attempts. Or you can focus on efficiency and extrapolate the data to find out who did more when they did have the ball. Those are some of the pieces of context surrounding this discussion, which serves to elevate the fan and media internet chatter. It certainly doesn’t diminish either player’s achievement.


Here are some other caveats that might be worth exploring, or at least considering:

  • data analysis: Saquon had huge outlier runs, six that went for 50+ this year. So there is a large volume of his yardage coming from explosive plays. It would be interesting to look at the median and mode numbers to see where the middle is.
  • offensive line: We know the Eagles’ 2024 unit to be among the best in the NFL. Saquon Barkley is running behind Cam Jurgens, Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata, Mekhi Becton, and Landon Dickerson. How good was the Rams’ line? Dickerson had six-time Pro Bowler Doug Smith at center and a five-time Pro Bowler in Kent Hill at left guard. Bill Bain was second-team All-Pro at left tackle that season and right guard Dennis Harrah went to six Pro Bowls in the late 70s and late 80s. Both Dickerson and Barkley ran behind great offensive lines.
  • quarterback and offensive style: The ’84 Rams had future Eagle Jeff Kemp under center, whose best receiver was Henry Ellard. The Eagles have Jalen Hurts and a much better passing game. Dickerson got more volume in that offense because it was a clear strength. They actually ran the ball 541 times between Dickerson and backups Dwayne Crutchfield and Barry Redden, whereas Kenny Gainwell and Will Shipley were second fiddle to both Barkley and Hurts.
  • strength of schedule: Did they even log SOS in 1984? The Rams had to play against Joe Montana’s 49ers twice, who finished 15-1 and were the best team in the NFL that year. The NFC West also included the 7-9 Saints and 4-12 Falcons, who LA went 3-1 against. They did not play division winners Miami, Denver, or Washington, and split against the Central winners in Pittsburgh and Chicago.
  • stacked boxes: The Sportradar data tells us that Saquon Barkley ran against a box of 8+ defenders 31.8% of the time this season. That looks to be slightly on the higher side by a few percentage points. This data was not logged 40 years ago, so we’d have to go back and watch the entire LA campaign to see what type of boxes Dickerson was facing.
  • defensive Zeitgeist: There’s a lot of talk about how defenses are built to stop passing games these days. Linebackers are a little smaller, and defensive ends have hybrid body types. How much did that benefit Saquon, if at all? It would be interesting to study.

Those are some possible asterisks to think about.

The more important question is whether or not the Eagles should allow Saquon to go for the record this weekend. Keep in mind that if he goes, you’d have to play the starting O line as well, because it wouldn’t make sense to have him run behind the backups. And with Hurts likely sitting down, the lack of a QB running threat might allow the Giants to just tee off on Barkley and focus on denying him. You risk injury to one or more important players and you have not had a bye week since early October, so the rest could be really beneficial.

The counterargument is that the Giants stink, you’re playing at home, and Hurts hasn’t played in a bit, so you give him a quarter or a half of football to knock off the rust, let Saquon go for it, then pull everybody as soon as he hits 101 on the ground.

It’s feasible, but it just does not seem like something the Eagles will do. They are the #2 seed and have a legitimate shot at winning the Super Bowl. If they err on the side of caution, it’s hard to see people being disappointed with that. At worst, Saquon will finish the regular season as a member of the 2k club and the Eagles’ single-season record  holder. That’s not a bad consolation prize.