Saquon Barkley carried Eagles to a key NFC East win, and his offseason signing is looking like a home run for Philly

PHILADELPHIA — With 7:46 to play in the third quarter, Saquon Barkley saw Bobby Wagner blitzing.

So the Philadelphia Eagles running back leaked out to the space the linebacker had fled, an easy checkdown awaiting Jalen Hurts should he choose to use it.

Some gain seemed likely. Then Washington Commanders safety Percy Butler whiffed on a tackle. All of a sudden, the Eagles’ marquee offseason signing picked up 43 yards.

Philadelphia wouldn’t yet break its soon-to-be three-quarter touchdown drought. Nor would the Eagles manage a lead in any of the first three quarters of their NFC East matchup against the Washington Commanders.

But the dam was fraying. And soon, it would burst.

Riding the wave of Barkley’s 198 scrimmage yards and two touchdowns, the Eagles beat an ascending Washington team, 26-18, on Thursday night. Improving to 8-2 with a head-to-head win over the closest competition in the division, Philadelphia is now firmly in control of its playoff destiny.

No one in Philadelphia, Barkley included, is suggesting the Eagles’ latest victory nor their 2024 success thus far results solely from the longtime New York Giants running back who has revived his career in Philadelphia.

But as Barkley posted his sixth 100-yard rushing game of the season (tying his mark from the previous four seasons combined) and moved into the NFL lead with 1,137 rushing yards, all agree that an Eagles team built to propel a running back is benefiting greatly from his services.

There are simply too many weapons for opponents to stop them all for four quarters. Barkley is a key ingredient in this pick-your-poison attack.

“He put in some good work today,” Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said. “I’ve been talking about this thing of us being multiple and us having a multiple approach. It can look different. And so I think as we embrace that as a football team, how different these things can look and how we succeed and how we put up points and produce, I think we’ll be able to continue to diversify ourselves in our efficiency.”

Eagles general manager Howie Roseman did not look at his roster this offseason and decide that extensions to receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith gave him a free pass on bolstering his run game. Nor did Roseman assume his perennially strong offensive line would simply buoy any bell cow to success.

Roseman did what is rarely done and signed a talented but aging running back away from a division rival when the New York Giants did not want to pay him as much. Balking league trends at the position paid off.

“Appreciate y’all, New York,” Eagles cornerback C.J. Gardner-Johnson said. “Shout out New York. Other than that, Sa[quon]’s been a hell of a guy for us.”

Commanders stunted Eagles for 3 quarters before tides turned

At halftime, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni confronted his team’s reality.

Philadelphia had converted just 3-of-11 third-down attempts. Kicker Jake Elliott had missed field-goal attempts from 44 and 51 yards. So their 174 yards of offense amounted to just 3 points.

“Really what we talked about at halftime was that, ‘Hey, this is going to be a grimy, gritty game,’” Sirianni said. “Just keep going. We know we are grimy and gritty. We know that team is grimy and gritty.

“It’s a street fight and it’s not about who is tougher — but about who is tougher longer.”

The message applied to multiple phases of the team. But Barkley took to heart how that could translate on a day when the run game was sometimes stalling.

He thought more intentionally about when he should keep tighter and when he could hit outside. When was the operation one block away from an explosive play and when did he need to just make one read differently downhill? Late in the third quarter and into the fourth, the Eagles began showing they were tougher longer.

The Eagles settled for a field goal after Barkley’s 43-yard gash but Philadelphia’s defense allowed just one first down before forcing a punt. Hurts took off to start the fourth quarter and then, in a change-of-pace, running back Kenneth Gainwell spelled Barkley and ripped off 14 and then 13 yards. Barkley came back into the game to take the Eagles around the left end to the 1-yard line, from which Hurts brotherly shoved his way into the end zone.

At last, with 12 minutes to play in the game, the Eagles had their first touchdown and their first lead, 12-10. But could they keep it?

Philadelphia nearly squandered their chance when Dallas Goedert coughed up the ball, but fellow tight end Grant Calcaterra recovered the fumble. Two plays later, Barkley’s blockers cleared a huge hole for him. He curved around the right edge for a 23-yard touchdown.

And after safety Reed Blankenship intercepted Washington quarterback Jayden Daniels the first play of the next drive?

The Eagles handed it off to Barkley twice more, Barkley cutting and bouncing his way to a 39-yard touchdown on his 26th carry of the night.

“We were putting up a lot of rushing yards, gaining a lot of respect,” Barkley said. “That’s gonna be a mindset for teams coming into the game: Make sure that we don’t do that. Because when we get the running game going, it’s kind of hard to beat our team.

“You could stop us for 20-something carriers, but we rip off two long ones when it matters most. The stats look pretty good and a lot of times you get a win.”

Barkley has a chance to reach uncharted territory in Philly

Barkley knows what it’s like to run up the box score and perhaps his fantasy value but not ultimately win the games.

As a rookie in 2018, he scored 15 touchdowns and led the league with 2,028 yards from scrimmage. The Giants won just five games.

In 2019, Barkley again managed 1,441 yards and eight scores — this time in just 13 games. The Giants won four that year.

And in 2022, New York’s only playoff campaign in Barkley’s six years there, his 1,650 yards and 10 touchdowns helped power a 9-7 team that upset the Minnesota Vikings in the wild-card round before getting blown out in the divisional round, 38-7, to his now-employer in Philadelphia.

Barkley watched them advance to the Super Bowl weeks later and knew then what he knows now: Philadelphia expects a deep postseason run. After seeing two Super Bowl appearances in the last decade, that’s realistic for the Eagles.

All of which is a long way of saying: Excuse Barkley for not unduly celebrating the Eagles’ 8-2 record, even if it includes more wins than all but one of his six New York years.

“We don’t get a trophy for midseason,” Barkley said. “We got to keep going.”

Teammates echoed that expectation.

Hurts spoke about how the team will “continue to build, utilize everything that we have to its fullest.” Gardner-Johnson said more plainly that the Eagles expect to and should win the division’s guaranteed playoff berth.

“You know who run[s] this division — no disrespect,” Gardner-Johnson said. “[Washington]’s a great team but we know what happens. We know what we gotta do.

“It’s not a diss or a shot at nobody. We just gotta understand. Keep what’s rightfully yours. Just keep playing ball.”