July 28, 2026
Eric Hartline/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Saquon Barkley knows he needs a better 2026.
Two years ago, Saquon Barkley was taking off into the open and sprinting toward roaring "M-V-P" chants, even in road stadiums. He was slipping through numerous tackles, spinning and cutting to extend plays that should've been dead on arrival, and in that one world-shaking case, jumping over a dude backwards.
In 2024, his first season with the Eagles, Barkley was legendary. He rushed for a franchise-record 2,005 yards during the regular season, and fell just 100 yards and a rest game shy of Eric Dickerson's all-time single-season record. Then in the playoffs, he was near unstoppable – a human cheat code – and scared the Kansas City Chiefs' defense so bad that it sold out on stopping him at all costs, and at the expense of everything else, that the rest of the Eagles turned loose for a historic Super Bowl thrashing.
You couldn't have written the script any better. Barkley came in, became an absolute gamebreaker that captured the collective heart of Philadelphia in a way only a select few athletes have before, and was crucial to having the Eagles on a championship parade down Broad Street and to the Art Museum steps in the end.
It was masterful.
But then the sequel, i.e the 2025 season, came along and just wasn't as good.
Barkley still ended up with 1,140 rushing yards, which would've been a great year for a running back under any other scenario, but this time, it was a disappointment. The offensive line in front of him wasn't as strong as it was a few months prior, he wasn't running the football with the same kind of pop either, and the offense on the whole was only showing ever-increasing signs of crumbling, which crashed and burned with a Wild Card loss to the 49ers in the title defense.
It wasn't good enough, and Barkley knew it.
"Obviously, we don't like the way the season ended," Barkley told the press back in May, when the Eagles reconvened for OTAs. "I personally don't like how my year went. I don't like how I performed for the team. I don't feel like I performed at a high enough level, and that's the beauty of it. It's easy when you rush for all these yards and you win a Super Bowl. It's easy to watch film and move on to the next chapter, but when it doesn't go the way you want it to be, you gotta lock in even more, be more detailed in yourself, be more critical of yourself. You gotta be your biggest self-critic, and just going back and watching film and seeing what I can do better.
"Then you find that. You find the weaknesses that you lacked the year prior, and you just go balls to the wall."
So Barkley wants a major bounce back. That's hardly a shocker, but what can that actually look like?
Because he's coming back to a new style of offense led by Sean Mannion, which is expected to be more pass-heavy with a priority on spreading the ball around more evenly, and in all seriousness, it's probably not realistic to expect another 2,000-yard and reverse hurdle type of season – those kind of years are once in a lifetime.
But at this stage of his career, Barkley should still have plenty left in the tank to continue to be impactful. History sets precedent for that.
Below is a look at the recent 2,000-yard rushers who preceded Barkley – Derrick Henry in 2020, Adrian Peterson in 2012, and Chris Johnson in 2009 – along with how they followed up those record seasons in the couple of years after.
The general trend: The wear catches up, or injury strikes, and then they get back to a star level, which should bode well for Barkley's hopes in 2026.
Without further ado...
| Season, Team (Age) | CAR | YDS |
| 2020, TEN (26) | 378 | 2,027 |
| 2021, TEN (27) | 219 | 937 |
| 2022, TEN (28) | 349 | 1,538 |
*Bold indicates NFL leader
With bulldozing power and near-inexplicable speed and nimbleness to match, Henry looked generational in the 2020 season, and then a broken bone in his foot cost him the back half of the 2021 season.
There was fear that he would never be the same running back again coming back, but he rebounded pretty well in 2022 to 1,500-plus yards, and now that he's in Baltimore, he's still regarded as one of the top rushers in the NFL.
Henry was even in a race with Barkley for the rushing title in 2024, you know, until a rookie Cooper DeJean spiked him into the grass.
Henry finished the 2024 season with 1,921 rushing yards, then ran for another 1,595 yards in 2025 at age 31. He's still going strong.
| Season, Team (Age) | CAR | YDS |
| 2012, MIN (27) | 348 | 2,097 |
| 2013, MIN (28) | 279 | 1,266 |
| 2014, MIN (29) | 21 | 75 |
| 2015, MIN (30) | 327 | 1,485 |
*Bold indicates NFL leader
Peterson, on an all-time MVP run, notoriously fell nine yards short of Dickerson's single-season record, but for the sake of a successful Vikings playoff bid.
The next year, he was still their star and the focal point of their offense, but nowhere near to that same degree while the rest of the team struggled.
In 2014, Peterson was indicted on child abuse charges and was ultimately suspended by the NFL for the rest of that season as his case proceeded.
Peterson came back in 2015 with a league-leading 1,485 yards on an also league-leading 327 carries that pushed Minnesota back into the playoffs, but with the cloud of his off-field actions hanging over his perception, and with the then 31-year-old about to encounter injury and years of wandering from team to team, offering occasional glimpses of the dominant runner he used to be.
| Season, Team (Age) | CAR | YDS |
| 2009, TEN (24) | 358 | 2,006 |
| 2010, TEN (25) | 316 | 1,364 |
| 2011, TEN (26) | 262 | 1,047 |
*Bold indicates NFL leader
Johnson broke out big time in just his second NFL season, and with youth to his advantage, he was able to stay on the field and turn in at least 1,000 rushing yards per year for Tennessee through 2013.
His career tapered off quickly after, though, with his recent reveal of an ALS diagnosis and fight against it bringing him back into the spotlight and garnering support league-wide.
For comparison's sake...
| Season, Team (Age) | CAR | YDS |
| 2024, PHI (27) | 345 | 2,005 |
| 2025, PHI (28) | 280 | 1,140 |
| 2026, PHI (29) | ??? | ??? |
*Bold indicates NFL leader
Again, Barkley was incredible in 2024, then good but not great in 2025 as former offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo and the Eagles tried to run HB dives like it was a square peg in a round hole.
The expectation, and hope, is that Mannion's offense will be far less predictable and versatile, which should open up some room again for the star running back.
And at age 29, and given the examples above, Barkley should have at least another two good years left in him performance-wise– maybe not to a 2,000-yard level again, but still reasonably to the 1,200-1,500-yard range.
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