Saquon Barkley joined the exclusive 2,000-yard club in his first Eagles season. Can he be the first to repeat?

O.J. Simpson became the first player in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards in a season when he ran for 2,003 yards in 14 games in 1973. But in 1974, Simpson, with the eyes of opposing defenses trained even more on the superstar back, managed 1,125 yards while his per-carry average dropped from 6 yards to 4.2.

Eric Dickerson had a nearly 900-yard drop-off from his record 2,105-yard season in 1984 to his 1985 campaign. Terrell Davis followed his 2,008-yard season in 1998 by suffering multiple torn ligaments in his right knee in Week 4 and missing the rest of the season. Similarly, Derrick Henry rushed for 2,027 yards in 2020 but suffered a broken bone in his foot the following year and played in just eight games.

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Barry Sanders, who racked up 1,491 yards in 1998, is the only one of the formerly eight-member 2,000-yard club to come somewhat close to repeating the year after making history, and he still was more than 500 yards away in what ultimately was his final NFL season at age 30.

The average year-after season for the other eight players who reached the milestone is approximately 1,079 yards, or nearly half, a mark that would be good for 12th in the league last season. Injuries, extra attention, and other factors can be attributed to the downswings. But there’s also the obvious, as Saquon Barkley said earlier this summer when asked why it was so hard to do it again: “Because it’s hard to do it in general,” he said. “There’s only nine of us who have ever done it.”

Barkley broke out in his first season with the Eagles. He changed the way they played offense, changed the way they pay his position, tallied the most single-season rushing yards — postseason included — in NFL history, and ran the Eagles to the Super Bowl, where his mere presence attracted so much attention that Jalen Hurts had an MVP performance sailing the ball around the Caesars Superdome in a blowout victory.

Repeating is the banned word at the NovaCare Complex. The 2024 Eagles were a singular group, and despite returning 10 of 11 starters on offense, last year was last year and this year is this year. That’s the mantra, and Barkley has bought into it. His 2024 season changed his life. He is on the Madden video game cover, signed to the richest per-year contract for a running back in NFL history, and in an exclusive club forever. But he, too, has turned the page.

“It’s kind of easy,” he said. “It’s the nature of this game and the nature of this business. It’s ‘What have you done for me lately?’ Whether you won a Super Bowl, whether you had a great year and you’re All-Pro, what you did the year prior has nothing to do with this year coming up.”

At 28 years old, though, Barkley thinks he’s entering his prime. The Eagles, meanwhile, still have arguably the best offensive line in football and a potent passing attack that puts opposing defenses in a pick-your-poison proposition that should allow for Barkley to at least pursue history in earnest.

Can he do it?

Barkley has long talked about his reverence for the game’s greats. He watches tape of some of the best running backs in NFL history, some of them the aforementioned 2,000-yard rushers, and is keenly aware that he has ascended to that kind of stratosphere. Even if he doesn’t talk about it.

“He doesn’t,” second-year running back Will Shipley said. “I think that’s what makes it so beautiful. You don’t ever hear him brag about it. He has pride in it, for sure, but he’s not over-prideful about it. The thing that is so respectable is he shows through his actions that he knows he can continue to do better than that. As a younger guy, that’s so easy to look up to and just want to follow behind. That’s just who he is.”

Why could Barkley break the mold? That was asked to Shipley and a few other Eagles.

“Inevitably, things are made to be broken,” Shipley said. “So you can pull all of those [statistics] and say that it didn’t happen because of this, that, or the other, but Saquon’s ready to do it again, and he’s prepared this offseason. He’s preparing right now to do it again. He’s ready to.”

AJ Dillon, the third running back on the active roster, joined the Eagles this year as a free agent after being with the Green Bay Packers for his first five NFL seasons. He and Barkley have mutual friends, so he wasn’t surprised when Barkley’s competitive side showed right away. Barkley hasn’t changed the way Dillon, 27, approaches the game, but he “helped solidify my mindset of competitiveness,” Dillon said.

“They always say birds of a feather flock together,” Dillon said. “So when you get an entire room — Will Shipley and [fullback] Ben VanSumeren included, and [running backs coach] Jemal Singleton — where it’s like, when we’re on the field, we’re going to impose our will and just dominate. We all bounce off each other."

Dillon thinks Barkley could break the mold because he can tell already that 2,000 yards wasn’t something Barkley set out to do. It just happened.

“I think he was just setting out to go out there and be the tone-setter,” Dillon said. “I think for a lot of guys, no matter what the achievement is, sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh, man, I hit this. I feel good.’ He wants to go out there and win the game and impose his will on people. He’s a competitor. No matter what it is, the meeting room, the weight room, shooting hoops, whatever, he’s trying to win. So I think, naturally, in doing that and going out there and trying to maximize every rep gives a guy like that a chance to do it.”

Barkley was a little quieter during training camp last year. He was the new guy finding his way on a new team. This year, it was hard to get through a training camp practice without hearing his voice. Barkley became the ninth player in the last 52 years to reach the 2,000-yard mark last year, but he thinks his best attribute is his ability to trash talk. So there he was after most plays, jawing with Reed Blankenship, Cooper DeJean, Jalen Carter, and whoever was in earshot.

It’s his way of leading and connecting with his teammates, and it’s one of the reasons his Eagles teammates voted him as a team captain for the 2025 season. The friendly banter brings out the best in each other, Barkley said.

Azeez Ojulari knows that side of Barkley well. The two spent three years together with the New York Giants, and Ojulari got an up-close view of a fiery competitor who works and trains to be the best.

“He’s just different,” said Ojulari, a linebacker. “The way he works is different. The way he comes in every day, his approach, is different. He’s just an all-around different player. He’s a great. And I think he’s consistent with everything he does, and it’s going to always show when he gets out there.”

What makes him different?

“It’s just Saquon,” Ojulari said. “He’s elite. He can do it all. You see it out there every Sunday whenever we play. Even in practice, every single day, he brings it every day. He’s just wired differently.”

If repeat is the verbum non grata, what about replicate?

If Barkley does what’s never been done before, it will be because he has, as tackle Jordan Mailata said, “doubled down on his routine.”

The Eagles are trying to replicate how they guided Barkley through the 2024 season, when he had 482 touches between the regular season and postseason, 105 more than his previous high in 2022.

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Could that workload be realistic in 2025?

“I guess it all depends on what your definition of a high load and a low load is,” Singleton said. “We’ve got the numbers and what guys have done.

“Y’all just count kind of what he did in the games. We’re counting everything he did during the week as well, and when we have to limit, we limit.”

Barkley got his share of rest during training camp, including during the second of two joint practices with Cleveland in mid-August. During those 11-on-11 team drills against the Browns, Barkley simulated playing. He made sure he got the play call so he could envision what he would do on the play and so he could coach up the other backs. He stayed engaged and talkative on the sideline.

The Eagles and coach Nick Sirianni have fielded countless questions about Barkley’s workload. The answers mostly have revolved around the practice week, when the Eagles manage Barkley’s plate. It is common to see the running back working out on a separate field. He touched the ball more than any other time in his football-playing life in 2024, but Barkley said he isn’t feeling the impact of the stress his body took on.

“I feel really good, and for me it’s really all about sticking to the plan that my team and the team here built and just following it,” he said.

Said Dillon: “I can kind of attest to this. The more years you spend in the league, especially when you’re running as much as he has, recovery is a big thing. Off the field, whether it’s getting a massage or getting in the cold tubs or he has those hyper-compression boots, he’s got it all, but that’s what you need. For a guy like that who is obviously the bell cow, it’s great to see that, and that’s why he continues to get better and kind of, I guess, breaks the stereotypical norm of, ‘Oh, running backs don’t last.’

“He’s in Year 8. Last year was seven, and he had his best year yet.”

The Eagles learned what worked in 2024, and aren’t changing much. They will manage Barkley’s workload during the week and do whatever it takes on game days to win football games.

“When we get to the game, [we’ve] got to do what we can to win,” Singleton said. “It may take him to do 35 carries, it may take him to do 10 carries. I think that’s the part that we have a feel for. And then if you’re running 60-yard touchdowns and not getting touched, you’re coming off the field anyway.”

Barkley had seven of those in 2024, the home-run shots becoming some of the signature moments in a history-making season.

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What will he do for an encore?

Barkley said he did not seek advice from the others in the 2,000-yard club about how they handled their bodies or what happened next, but he did talk to Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith. Barkley’s word was consistency last year, and it was in that vein that he sought advice from Smith, “probably the most consistent running back of all time.”

It was telling that he talked to Smith and not one of the 2,000-yard members — as if the number is just a number, and not something he is hyper-focused on reaching again.

“For me, 2,000 yards is not the goal,” Barkley said. “It’s winning Super Bowls and going out there and performing at a high level. I didn’t come in with the mindset last year to rush for 2,000 yards. It kind of just happened. Just stay in the moment, take care of the little things, be consistent with my process, and be obsessive with my process.

“If it’s in the cards again, it is. If it’s not, it’s not.”