Saquon Barkley’s super season with Eagles continues

PHILADELPHIA — There was a brief moment of confusion and something close to panic on the field late in Sunday’s NFC Divisional playoff game, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Eagles. They were clinging to a one-score lead, their grip on the contest not quite as certain as it should have been. The offense had trotted out after the defense had just forced a three-and-out.

Saquon Barkley heard the play, broke the huddle and stood next to quarterback Jalen Hurts in the backfield when all of a sudden things didn’t feel right to him. The blocking in front of him wasn’t lining up with what he was envisioning. He held his hands out in desperation looking for an explanation.

“Am I on the wrong side?” he asked Hurts.

Nope. Not anymore. Not since he swapped NFC East jerseys to make the jump from the Giants to the Eagles in free agency last March and now find himself one game away from playing in the Super Bowl.

He’s definitely on the correct side of all of that right now.

If there was any shred of doubt even after he led the league in regular-season rushing yards for the first time in his career while the Giants floundered to a last-place finish, he pretty much trounced them with Sunday’s performance in the 28-22 win over the Rams at Lincoln Financial Field.

Barkley’s 205 rushing yards broke the Eagles’ 75-year-old record for a postseason game held by Steve Van Buren with 196 in 1949 (also against the Rams). Barkley gave his team an early advantage with a dazzling 62-yard touchdown run late in the first quarter and then, on that play where he thought he was lined up improperly — and he was, by the way; Hurts changed the call to accommodate him — he burst through a hole on the left side of the line and sprinted 78 yards for the most important score of the game.

At most times during his career with the Giants, Barkley was already home watching football by this time of the year. He was beaten and battered, nursing injuries that sometimes required surgeries and other times just ice for his psyche.

Here with the Eagles he looks energized, rejuvenated. He bounces up off the turf following plays with the spring of a winner. He smiles. The great irony is the Giants let him walk because they thought he was too old to pay with a long-term contract, yet here he looks and plays with a youthful exuberance that his time in New York had drained from him.

There was even a photograph someone from the team showed him in the postgame locker room of the look on his face as he scored that 78-yard touchdown. He had run all the way across the end zone having arrived there so quickly there were no teammates with whom to celebrate, and then slid like a baseball player in the snow.

“It was me screaming like a little kid,” he said of the picture.

He joked he might have to throw some of his superstar weight around and have the team take that photograph down from the various platforms. But nothing would illustrate the difference between Giants Barkley and Eagles Barkley better than that Kodak moment.

“It feels amazing,” he said after the win. “This is the reason why I came here. When me and my family went through the pros and cons on the list of where we wanted to be I felt like this was the best opportunity to be able to play in games like this.”

And the next one, of course. And possibly the one after that.

Each of those levels is, certainly, another dagger to the Giants’ decision to let him walk. It’s a debate that will rage for years and will take a long time to decide who ultimately was correct. If Barkley gets hurt or regresses at some point, public opinion could swing back toward John Mara and Joe Schoen. Right now, though, Barkley is running far out ahead and taunting the trailing Giants much the way he slowed down to tease Rams linebacker Jared Verse on his 62-yard run before easily crossing the goal line ahead of him.

The difference is Verse came close. The Giants aren’t even in the picture.

“This is the furthest I ever made it,” Barkley said. “The furthest I made it was the Divisional round in New York and we got beat by Philly and I’m just happy for the opportunity, happy to be here, and I look forward to playing in a championship game in Philly, too.”

He will do that on Sunday against Washington.

All of this was in Barkley all along, even when he wasn’t able to show it on a weekly basis while wearing blue, and certainly while he was not participating in these big-stage games.

Mekhi Becton, a former Jet who has found redemption himself in Philadelphia, said of Barkley’s penchant for big plays: “It’s just rinse and repeat. It’s the same we’ve been seeing all year. He’s a dog. They been saying that since he was in New York. He’s just a dog. Nothing new.”

Not entirely accurate. Everything is new. That’s the point.

“There are so many variables that go into it,” Barkley said of his new levels of success this season. “The coaching, the scheme. The offensive line. I’d be crazy not to give them a shout-out and not realize that. But during those times and moments when things weren’t so great, I never lost faith. I always continued to trust in the process and trust in my training.”

If Barkley does get to the Super Bowl, he will have reason to celebrate. It won’t only be due to the opportunity to win a championship, but because it also will be his birthday. He turns 28 on Feb. 9. 

That was too old for the Giants’ liking. For Barkley and the Eagles, it feels just about right.