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Saquon Barkley contract details: Where Eagles star ranks among highest-paid RBs

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Saquon Barkley contract details: Where Eagles star ranks among highest-paid RBs

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The New York Giants had a difficult decision to make during the 2023 NFL offseason, as two of their key offensive players were set to be free agents following the year.

The first was quarterback Daniel Jones, who was coming off a career-best season in Brian Daboll’s first year with the team. The Giants won 11 games in the regular season, beat the Minnesota Vikings in the playoffs and saw Jones show signs that he could become a solid starting quarterback.

The other was running back Saquon Barkley. The fourth-year running back was coming off a season that saw him log a career-high 295 carries and 1,312 rushing yards while demonstrating he still had the juice needed to be a top-tier running back. He was the team’s best offensive player, but at a time where running back value across the league was depressed, it wasn’t clear whether the Giants wanted to give him a lucrative contract.

Ultimately, New York decided to place the franchise tag on Barkley while signing Jones to a four-year, $160 million contract. That proved to be regrettable, as the Giants never were able to agree to a long-term deal with Barkley.

Eventually, Barkley ended up with the division-rival Philadelphia Eagles in the 2024 NFL offseason. In 2024, the 27-year-old threatened to break Eric Dickerson’s long-standing NFL single-season rushing yards record.

Barkley has been a boon for the Eagles‘ offense and will likely be in the running for the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year award. While Philadelphia is paying the veteran big money for his position, his contract with the team isn’t breaking their bank.

Here’s what to know about Barkley’s contract with the Eagles and why the Giants let him walk.

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Saquon Barkley contract details

Barkley signed a three-year contract with the Eagles during the 2024 NFL offseason. Below is a breakdown of the deal’s basics, per Spotrac.com.

  • Term: 3 years
  • Total value: $37.75 million
  • Average annual value (AAV): $12.58 million
  • Guaranteed money: $26 million

Barkley carries a cap hit of just $3.8 million in 2024, his first season with the Eagles. The 27-year-old’s deal also has four void years – an accounting mechanism used by NFL teams to defray the cap hit of a player by prorating it over a longer period – attached to it.

So, while the Eagles will only be paying Barkley from 2024-26 over the life of his current deal, he won’t come off their books in full until 2030.

Who is the NFL’s highest-paid RB?

San Francisco 49ers star Christian McCaffrey is the NFL’s highest-paid running back by AAV. He signed a a two-year extension with San Francisco that will pay him $19 million annually beginning in 2026. Before that, McCaffrey was on a four-year deal worth just over $64 million, making him worth $16 million annually. Either number would make the 49ers star the NFL’s highest-paid running back.

While McCaffrey makes the most league-wide in AAV, his contract is no longer the largest at the position. That honor belongs to Josh Jacobs, who is set to make $48 million over the life of his four-year deal with the Green Bay Packers.

Even so, it should be noted that McCaffrey’s four-year rookie extension he originally signed with the Carolina Panthers doesn’t end until after the 2025 NFL season. So, while McCaffrey’s new deal is worth just $38 million in total value, he is still set to make an extra $16.2 million in 2025, bringing his total three-year value up to $54.2 million.

As such, one could consider McCaffrey the highest-paid running back in the NFL in terms of total value.

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Full list of NFL’s highest-paid RBs

McCaffrey and Barkley have helped lead a mini running back renaissance in the NFL during the 2024 NFL season. Below is a look at who has the highest AAV, guarantees and total contract value at the position this year.

AAV

  1. Christian McCaffrey, San Francisco 49ers: $19 million
  2. Jonathan Taylor, Indianapolis Colts: $14 million
  3. Saquon Barkley, Philadelphia Eagles: $12.6 million
  4. Alvin Kamara, New Orleans Saints: $12.3 million
  5. Josh Jacobs, Green Bay Packers: $12 million
  6. Joe Mixon, Houston Texans: $9.9 million
  7. David Montgomery, Detroit Lions: $9.1 million
  8. Rhamondre Stevenson, New England Patriots: $9 million
  9. Chuba Hubbard, Carolina Panthers: $8.3 million
  10. Derrick Henry, Baltimore Ravens: $8 million

Guaranteed money

  1. Jonathan Taylor, Indianapolis Colts: $26.5 million
  2. Saquon Barkley, Philadelphia Eagles: $26 million
  3. Christian McCaffrey, San Francisco 49ers: $24 million
  4. Bijan Robinson, Atlanta Falcons: $22 million
  5. Alvin Kamara, New Orleans Saints: $19.2 million
  6. Jahmyr Gibbs, Detroit Lions: $17.4 million
  7. Rhamondre Stevenson, New England Patriots: $17.1 million
  8. Joe Mixon, Houston Texans: $16 million
  9. D’Andre Swift, Chicago Bears: $15.3 million
  10. Chuba Hubbard, Carolina Panthers: $15 million

Total contract value

  1. Josh Jacobs, Green Bay Packers: $48 million
  2. Jonathan Taylor, Indianapolis Colts: $42 million
  3. Christian McCaffrey, San Francisco 49ers: $38 million
  4. Saquon Barkley, Philadelphia Eagles: $37.8 million
  5. Rhamondre Stevenson, New England Patriots: $36 million
  6. Chuba Hubbard, Carolina Panthers: $33.2 million
  7. Joe Mixon, Houston Texans: $25.5 million
  8. Miles Sanders, Carolina Panthers: $25.4 million
  9. Alvin Kamara, New Orleans Saints: $24.5 million
  10. D’Andre Swift, Chicago Bears: $24 million

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Why didn’t the Giants re-sign Saquon Barkley?

Given Barkley’s reasonable price and top-end production at the running question, many will ask why the Giants decided not to re-sign the 2018 first-round draft pick.

The reason was simple. The Giants were unable to agree to a long-term deal with Barkley during the 2023 and 2024 NFL offseasons. They chose to hit him with the franchise tag in 2023 after agreeing to the aforementioned four-year, $160 million deal with Jones but then let Barkley hit free agency in 2024.

The goal in allowing Barkley to become a free agent was to get a sense of the veteran running back’s value. The running back had endured injury issues during his six years with the Giants and had averaged under 4 yards per carry in two of his final three seasons with the team.

As a result, Giants general manager Joe Schoen wanted to let the market dictate Barkley’s value, as he told Barkley’s agent Ed Berry in a conversation shown on the offseason edition of HBO’s “Hard Knocks.”

“I’m torn, Ed, because I still think he can play, and I think he can help us,” Schoen said to Berry in a viral clip from the show. “But I didn’t wanna comment on numbers. I don’t have a great idea where the market is. That’s why I’m gonna let the league tell him what it is and, hey, if you wanna come back and be a Giant, let’s try to find something that makes sense. If we’re close, then let’s have a conversation, because again, I do think he was our best offensive player.”

Later, the program showed Schoen on the phone with Barkley explaining New York’s decision.

“I think mulling over this, the right thing to do is let you test the market and see what your value is,” Schoen told Barkley. “I don’t wanna do the franchise (tag) thing again or all that stuff again. I don’t wanna go through that. We’ve both been through that.

“If you really wanna be a Giant for life, and you’re interested in staying here and coming back, just see what your market is, have Ed come back to us and we’ll see if we can come to an agreement.”

Barkley appeared miffed on the phone, saying, “I mean, I already told you where I wanna be.” Eventually, he agreed to his deal with the Eagles, a team he was “excited” to join.

“When it came to my attention that they were a team interested in me I definitely got excited about it,” Barkley said in a news conference after signing with the Eagles. “Watching from afar everything that they’re about, the culture, the fans, definitely got excited about it. I’m happy to be a part of this and ready to go.”

Since then, Barkley has gone on to become just the ninth 2,000-yard rusher in NFL history. Meanwhile, the Giants got a combined 1,195 rushing yards from their top tandem of rookie fifth-round draft pick Tyrone Tracy Jr. and veteran Devin Singletary – who signed a three-year, $16.5 million deal to help replace Barkley – in the first 16 games of the 2024 NFL season.

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