08/05/26 09:46:00
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08/05 09:44 CDT Eagles running back Saquon Barkley was inspired by Barry
Sanders serving his teammates
Eagles running back Saquon Barkley was inspired by Barry Sanders serving his
teammates
By ROB MAADDI
AP Pro Football Writer
Saquon Barkley saw a clip of Barry Sanders on NFL Films when he was a kid that
left a lasting impression.
It wasn't Sanders juking half the defense on one of his dynamic touchdown runs.
Instead, the Hall of Fame running back who inspired a generation of running
backs with his sensational, elusive, shifty style was walking up and down the
sideline handing out refreshments to his teammates.
"They were talking about how great of a player he was but they had a clip of
him holding Gatorade cups and he's walking down," Barkley said on the AP's "On
Football" podcast. "He is going to his teammates and just the way that he
carried himself. So I would say I have to give my flowers to him there."
Barkley joined Sanders as one of nine players to rush for 2,000 yards in a
season in 2024 when he was the AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year and helped
the Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl.
Barkley demonstrated he's a team-first player by sitting out the final
regular-season game when he needed 101 yards to break Eric Dickerson's record.
Earlier in the season, he told coach Nick Sirianni to let other backs get some
carries after he had already rushed for 176 yards against his former Giants
teammates and needed 14 more in the fourth quarter to set a new career-high.
Barkley finished with an NFL-record 2,504 combined rushing yards in the regular
season and playoffs.
He credits his parents, Alibay Barkley and Tonya Johnson, for instilling in him
an unselfish mindset.
"Just how my parents raised me," he said. "Everything, who I am a person, it
stems from my family, my brothers and sisters, and the coaches that I had
growing up. But I don't think you should get flowers for being a great
teammate. I don't think anything that I've done or that I said is rare. At
least it shouldn't be rare. It should be the norm, and it is the norm. I might
have just got caught on camera, or I might've had an article written about me,
but there's other stuff that I have done that's behind the scenes, and I have
multiple teammates that have done great things for me, too. And it's a winning
culture. You want to create that culture. If you want to win football games,
you want to be competing for championships, that matters. And I bought into
that at a very young age and I think that's what, I guess you could say,
separated me."
Barkley's first season in Philadelphia after playing his first six with the New
York Giants couldn't have been scripted any better. He followed up his All-Pro
campaign with 1,140 yards rushing in 2025 behind a banged-up offensive line.
The Eagles won 11 games, captured their second straight division title but lost
a wild-card game to San Francisco. An inconsistent offense cost offensive
coordinator Kevin Patullo his job.
Championship parades are the new standard in Philadelphia.
Some athletes don't want to play in a pressure-packed environment. Barkley
loves it.
"I embrace it. I don't think pressure is a real thing from the outside force,"
Barkley said. "You have to hold yourself to a high standard. I know Philly
holds us to a higher standard already, but I feel like the way I carry myself
and how I train and the standard I hold myself, I fit right into the city and
into this fan base. ... You want to win every year. That's the goal."
Barkley's acrobatic backward hurdle over a Jaguars player during the 2024
season ended up being the Madden 2026 cover. It also inspired DIRECTV's recent
campaign featuring Barkley jumping through hoops, flipping over a utility cart
and hopping onto a crossbar.
"Watching football shouldn't feel like jumping through hoops. That's why I have
DIRECTV," Barkley says in the television commercial.
Of course, he lauded the brand's team spirit.
"The kind of culture that they have and the day I was able to spend with them,
I was knocked away and I'm just thankful for the opportunity," he said.
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