Former Penn State running back [autotag]Saquon Barkley[/autotag] will not get a chance to rewrite the NFL record book on the final Sunday of the NFL’s regular season. The Philadelphia Eagles will rest their starters, including Barkley, in the final game of the regular season on Sunday afternoon against the New York Giants. This will leave Barkley short of the NFL’s single-season rushing record.
Barkley made some NFL history last week by becoming the NFL’s ninth player to rush for 2,000 yards in a single season. Barkley’s 2,005 rushing yards this season will be good for the eighth most yards in a single season, although he will remain 102 yards shy of breaking the NFL single-season rushing record of 2,105 yards held by Eric Dickerson.
The Eagles are resting Barkley and their starters because the team is locked into the no. 2 seed in the NFC playoff field with nothing to gain or lose as a result of Sunday’s regular-season finale against the Giants. The Eagles will host the Green Bay Packers or the Washington Commanders in the NFC Wild Card round next week.
As much as it might have been poetic justice to see Barkley set the single-season rushing record against the team that let him walk in publicly embarrassing fashion, the decision to keep Barkley on the sidelines with the rest of the starters before hosting a wild-card round next week is the right decision for a team hoping to make a run to a Super Bowl title.
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