Football Bytes: Saquon Barkley is Defying RB Gravity
Plus, a check-in on the state of New York football.
Welcome to Football Bytes — a weekly NFL column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various football spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Football Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!
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🏈 Barkley’s Big Year
As a jaded former Philadelphian, I thought I had seen it all go down before: Signing an exciting running back from a rival team to a huge contract, only to have that RB flop horribly and leave town shortly thereafter.
But it turns out that Saquon Barkley was not another DeMarco Murray. Far from it, in fact: Barkley currently leads the NFL in rushing yards (1,392), yards per game (126.5), yards per carry (6.2) and total yards from scrimmage (1,649). When he’s not backwards-hurdling over defenders, he’s running for the most yards in a game (255) by any NFL player since 2010 and the ninth-most all-time.
And the Eagles are coming along for the ride. During Barkley’s recent stretch of 100+ yards in five of his past six games — in which he’s averaging 179.2 YPG and has eclipsed 180 yards four times — Philadelphia is averaging 31.7 points per game, second-most behind only the dominant Detroit Lions (34.8).
None of this was obviously going to happen. Barkley had been extremely inconsistent as a member of the New York Giants ever since returning from the torn ACL he suffered in Week 2 of the 2020 season — struggling to just 593 yards on 3.7 YPC in 13 games in 2021, rebounding to post 1,312 yards and 4.4 YPC in 16 games in 2022, then dipping back down to 962 yards and 3.9 YPC in 14 games last season.
Given what we knew about RB aging patterns, which show players at the position peaking around age 26, it was not unreasonable to think that Barkley would be of only modest effectiveness for the Eagles at age 27 in 2024. And in fact, that’s what we saw from the group of historical RBs who (like Barkley) played at least 30 games with between 60-80 adjusted YPG1 from ages 24-26:
Not so with Barkley, however, who is instead tracking for the best season of a career that had already seen him win Rookie of the Year and be named to a couple of Pro Bowls. After feeling underappreciated with the Giants, Barkley is getting his revenge the best way any player can: with a flat-out monster performance.
Maybe we should have seen at least some of this coming. For instance, one factor Barkley has going in his favor this season is vastly improved blocking. Last season, he ranked just 36th out of 44 qualified non-QBs in yards before contact per carry, a proxy for how much room the offensive line opens up for a rusher. (Philly’s leading rusher, D'Andre Swift, ranked fifth.) This year, Barkley leads all non-QBs in that category — while his yards after contact have barely budged between the seasons:
That’s not to say Barkley is playing the game on easy mode this season. More accurately, he is simply the centerpiece of an offense that is perfectly suited to maximize his talents — talents that include being able to produce five of the 19 fastest ball-carrier runs in the NFL this season.
Sometimes, all you can do is just sit back in awe, appreciate the greatness — and happily admit you were 100 percent wrong about a player being in decline.
🏈 Is There Anything for N.Y. Teams to Be Thankful For?
My friends Harry and Vin were texting with me about the Jets and Giants the other day (as one does), and wondering just how bad this season has been for both of the New Jersey New York teams in the context of history.
The Jets are 3-8 while the Giants are 2-9, giving them a combined record of 5-17 through 11 games apiece. Somehow, that merely sits in a six-way tie, most recently with 2014, for the second-fewest wins through 11 games by both NYC teams. (The teams’ average Elo rating of 1381.4 only ranks 10th-worst all-time as well.) It is, however, just the eighth time ever that both teams had 3 wins or fewer through 11 games, tying the mark for the fewest wins by the greater of the two teams by record at this stage of the season:
Suffice to say that neither NYC football squad is going to be joining the Liberty as the city’s latest champions. And this downturn might be more painful than most, given the expectations of just a few years ago. In the spring of 2023, the Giants were coming off a playoff win over Minnesota and had just signed QB Daniel Jones to a contract extension. The Jets had acquired future HOF QB Aaron Rodgers to pair with one of the NFL’s best defenses.
Bright football days were supposed to be ahead in the Big Apple. But things unraveled the same way they have mostly tended to for both franchises over the past decade and a half.
The only saving grace for New York football might just be that the Bills — technically the only team that actually plays its games in the state of NY — are one of this year’s most likely Super Bowl winners. So New York State might get a champion from the NFL after all… just not from one of the NYC-area teams, who are just about as bad as ever.
Filed under: NFL, Football Bytes
This is just standard yards per game, adjusted from the current year’s rushing environment to a generic environment of 120 rushing YPG and 4.0 YPC.
The operative number with Barkley is 250 - his League leading number of touches. He currently is averaging roughly 23 touches per game and is on pace for the most of his career at 364 even presuming he sits the final week.
The Eagles are irresponsibly using him up to accumulate gaudy but largely meaningless regular season numbers long before the games that really matter start...and it's not just relevant for this year. As I noted before the season started, Barkley had not yet reached the 1,500 level of touches where RBs historically have essentially one more high-level season between 1,500 and 1,800 touches. Barkley was at 1489, so 2024 is not a huge surprise in terms of age and performance.
Chronological age is too often overrated for RB aging curves as compared to touches. Barkley has missed material action in three seasons which ironically has helped preserve him later in his career. However, as Barkley shatters the 1,500 touches wall and likely exceeds 1,800 touches by the end of this year, 2025 and 2026 now seem likely for serious regression.
As I warned at the start of the season, Philadelphia paid for 3 seasons to get 1 good one...as they burn through their one year like the worst irresponsible startup with delusional VC money.
Consider the eerily similar case of Christian McCaffrey who I similarly warned about at the start of this year. In 2023 he – like Barkley - entered the season at 1467 touches and was promptly overused to the tune of a League leading 339 touches...all as the media wildly applauded. Now, both McCaffrey and San Francisco are suffering the sins of their organizational shortsightedness. For comparison, Barkley at his current rate will have 25 more touches over 16 games than McCaffrey did last year.
Barkley, like McCaffrey, also has a history of injuries. He's never played a full season and only twice played 16. With the NFC East now looking like a cakewalk as the Commanders are fading, and Detroit sitting pretty with the likely #1 seed...what the hell are they doing giving him 30 touches to beat the lowly Rams in a game they had in hand after the 3rd quarter?
I'm sorry, it's just the height of irresponsibility. No other way to look at it.
The Eagles are only 11 games in. The key to their entire season is to dial back Barkley now and lower his usage significantly. Philadelphia needs to stop playing for the media's accolades and start playing for the games that matter in January...