The Rams retooled to stop Saquon Barkley. Will it work?
The Eagles won both games last year thanks mostly to Barkley’s massive TD runs. At least, that’s what the Rams think.
According to Jared Verse, the standout second-year Los Angeles Rams defensive end, Saquon Barkley was what stood in between the Rams and the NFC championship game last season.
Well, stood might not be the apt verb to describe the running back’s dominance in that game. Barkley plowed a vast gulf through the snow between the Rams and their Super Bowl aspirations when he dashed for 205 yards and two touchdowns on 26 carries, helping the Eagles to a 28-22 win.
That performance somehow paled in comparison to his Week 12 output against the Rams, when he rushed for a single-game, franchise-best 255 yards and two touchdowns on 26 carries.
Barkley had two explosive touchdown runs in the divisional round — a 78-yarder and a 62-yarder — and two in the regular season — one for 72 yards and another for 70.
In Verse’s mind, it’s simple — those explosive plays were what did the Rams in for the remainder of the playoffs.
“When you take away the four big runs that they had against us, it changes the game completely,” Verse told reporters on Thursday. “It’s not the same narrative of, ‘Oh, we’re not making the NFC championship game,’ or anything like that. We’re going to the NFC championship and further than that.
“So all you have to do is eliminate the explosives. We take away the explosives, both of those games are very winnable.”
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Exactly seven months since the day of the divisional-round game against the Rams, Barkley said Friday that he isn’t fixated on his performances from last year.
“Last year was last year,” Barkley said. “I’m not worried about it. But I don’t come from the school of thought of just because you take away the [four] biggest runs, it’s a different game. That’s like if you’re fighting someone in boxing and you’re like, ‘Well, if you didn’t land that right hook, I probably wouldn’t have been knocked out.’ It is what it is. That was last year. I’m excited for the challenge this year.”
But the counterpunch this year is posed by a Rams team that spent the offseason addressing the way Barkley gashed them last season. Rams general manager Les Snead beefed up the run defense in free agency, signing 5-foot-11, 310-pound defensive tackle Poona Ford to a three-year, $27.6 million deal and starting inside linebacker Nate Landman to a one-year, $1.1 million contract.
The early returns for the Rams are promising. Their defense is conceding minus-.03 expected points added per run play, a metric that measures the average points a defense gives up on a rush, which ranks in the top half of the league, per Next Gen Stats. The Rams also haven’t given up a run of 15 yards or more through two games.
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Of course Barkley, the 2024 offensive player of the year, isn’t the same running back as the Houston Texans’ Nick Chubb and the Tennessee Titans’ Tony Pollard.
The Rams will face their biggest test on the ground this season. This time around, will they come in with a different game plan to stop Barkley? In their last two meetings, the Rams stacked the box (eight or more defenders) on 34.6% of his rushes in Week 12 and 30.8% in the playoffs. They were the fourth- and seventh-highest rates, respectively, that Barkley faced last season.
“I don’t know,” Barkley said. “Apparently, they think we only hit them for [four] big ones, so maybe not. Maybe we’ve just got to go back and watch the playoff game, and that’s exactly what they’re going to do.
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“But whatever they do, I hate to say this and sound arrogant, but it’s really about us. That’s something that I try to make sure, to harp to the guys, like, yes, we’ve got to handle the unknown. We’ve got to worry about what they’re going to do to us, how they’re going to try to stop the run, how they’re going to try to stop A.J. [Brown] and [DeVonta Smith], but in reality, when we’re all on the same page, we’re a hard team to stop.”
Still, the Eagles offense has been coming together gradually over the last two weeks. Barkley has yet to eclipse 100 rushing yards in a single game, a feat that became routine for him last year. He’s averaging 3.7 yards per attempt, which is tied for the second-lowest clip of his career.
But it’s only been two games. Barkley hasn’t lost patience. In fact, he’s encouraged by the state of the offense.
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“I actually probably would be a little concerned if everything was firing at 100% and everything was going perfectly fine,” Barkley said. “That’s not football. That’s not how it works. There’s development within the season, no matter if you have a lot of the same guys. It’s a different team. Obviously, a different play caller.
“But the beauty of that is not getting caught up in the B.S. that’s outside this building. And just focusing on us and know that, trusting the process, and that things are going to come together and we’re going to have the performances that we would like to have. But most importantly, just continue winning football games.”