Fans were devastated when Saquon Barkley sat out in Week 18 just 100 yards shy of Eric Dickerson’s single-season NFL rushing record, which has stood since 1984, but that didn’t stop the Penn State legend from setting a different single-season record along the Philadelphia Eagles’ run to the Super Bowl LIX title.
With 2,005 yards, Barkley became the ninth player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season and sits eighth all-time on the single-season rushing list, but with his 2,504 yards on the ground through the regular season and postseason, he broke Terrell Davis’s mark of 2,476 from the Denver Bronco’s 1998 Super Bowl season.
Barkley was held relatively in check by the Kansas City Chiefs in his Eagles 40-22 victory on Sunday night in New Orleans, rushing for just 57 yards on 25 carries. However, that modest outing was more than enough to break Davis’s record because of what Barkley had done in his three previous playoff games.
The seventh-year running back went for 119 yards on the ground in Philadelphia’s Wild Card win over the Packers, then ran wild for 205 yards and two touchdowns against the Rams in the Division round. Finally, with a spot in the Super Bowl on the line, Barkley amassed 118 yards on just 15 carries, including a 60-yard score on his team’s first offensive snap against the Commanders.
While many NFL records are being broken because of an expanded regular season schedule, Barkley didn’t take advantage of the extra regular season week to surpass Davis. He did, however, have the advantage of a seven-team playoff format that only features a first-round bye for the No. 1 seed in each conference. Prior to the 2020 NFL season, the No. 2 seed Eagles would not have played in the Wild Card round. Still, Barkley’s season is monumental, one of the best ever submitted by a running back, and to end it with a Super Bowl after Barkley was stuck on terrible teams in New York for the first six years of his NFL career was borderline poetic.
The Nittany Lions legend is finally making good on all the talent he displayed in Happy Valley, and for Penn State fans, it’s a beautiful thing to see.