Saquon Barkley just needed to get back into the state of Pennsylvania for his NFL career to finally take off. On Thursday night, just days before he appears in the Super Bowl for the first time, the first-year Philadelphia Eagle was recognized for his 2,000-yard season with the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year Award.
While it was arguably his biggest, OPOY wasn’t Barkley’s first major award at the NFL Honors. The former No. 2 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft won the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year for his 1,300-yard season with the New York Giants.
Leaving New York this past offseason for a free-agent deal with the Eagles was the best decision of Barkley’s career. With an elite offensive line and an athletic quarterback in Jalen Hurts to share the backfield with, Barkley’s finally making good on the massive potential that everybody identified when he was coming out of Penn State after just three seasons.
While he made history as the first Eagle to win OPOY and as the ninth player to rush for 2,000 yards in a single season, he could have made even more if he didn’t sit out the final week of the year against his former team. Barkley entered Week 18 just 100 yards shy of Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record of 2,105, which he set back in 1984. Since then, Adrian Peterson in 2012 was the closest to breaking the record, racking up 2,097 yards in his MVP season.
With two dominant quarterbacks on the ballot, Barkley finished third in MVP voting. Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen won the award for the first time, narrowly edging out Lamar Jackson, who was named First-Team All-Pro. Barkley was also named First-Team All-Pro for the first time this season.
The individual recognition is fantastic for arguably the most talented Nittany Lion of all time, but he’s after something much bigger on Sunday in New Orleans, something that would make his homecoming back to PA complete.