Eagles’ Saquon Barkley to Be Held out vs. Giants amid NFL Rushing Record Pursuit

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni announced Wednesday that he will sit running back Saquon Barkley and other starters during Sunday’s regular-season finale against the New York Giants.

At 13-3, the Eagles have already clinched the NFC East and they are locked in as the No. 2 seed in the NFC, meaning Sunday’s game is of no importance to them.

However, there was some thought that the Eagles would still start Barkley since the Giants are his former team and he is just 100 yards shy of matching Eric Dickerson’s single-season NFL record for rushing yardage.

In last week’s 41-7 win over the Dallas Cowboys, Barkley rushed for 167 yards on 31 carries, giving him a total of 2,005 rushing yards on the season.

Barkley is just the ninth player in NFL history to rush for 2,000 or more yards in a single season, and his 2,005 yards are eighth on the all-time list, which is led by Dickerson’s 2,105 yards.

After spending his first six NFL seasons with the Giants, Barkley signed a three-year, $37.75 million contract with the Eagles in free agency during the offseason, and the move has already paid major dividends.

Barkley is the leading candidate to win the NFL Offensive Player of the Year Award and is in the mix for the NFL MVP Award by virtue of rushing for 2,005 yards and 13 touchdowns on 345 carries, while also catching 33 passes for 278 yards and two scores.

While breaking the single-season NFL rushing record against his former team would have been a defining moment in Barkley’s career, the Eagles have their sights set on even bigger goals.

Philly is among the top teams to beat in the NFC along with the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings, and if healthy, the Eagles have as good of a chance as any team to go the distance and reach the Super Bowl.

Barkley will undoubtedly be a huge part of the equation come playoff time, and the risk of an injury far outweighs the reward of possibly setting a record.

Although the news is disappointing for football fans who wanted to see Barkley take his shot at history, there is at least one person who is likely elated by the news.

That person is Dickerson, who told Jarrett Bell of USA Today this week that he didn’t want Barkley to break his record, saying:

“These people who say, ‘Records are meant to be broken,’ you ain’t got no record. You don’t have one. When you get those records, you want to hang on to them. No matter if it was in bowling and you had 30 strikes in a row, you don’t want nobody to break that. The fastest mile ever, you don’t want nobody to break that. Those are true accomplishments. You can always look back and that record’s been held for 40 years now.”

Had Barkley played in Week 18 and broken Dickerson’s record, some may have doubted the legitimacy of the record since Dickerson set it in 1984 in a 16-game season.

That is part of the evolution of football, though, as original 2,000-yard rusher O.J. Simpson accomplished his feat in 14 games in 1973.

While Barkley will not enter the record books, he had a running back season for the ages nonetheless, and he will look to do something only done by Terrell Davis, which is rush for 2,000 yards and win the Super Bowl in the same season.