There are times in all our lives when we have to stop. Put everything on hold. Chill. Close our eyes. Enjoy. Embrace. Honor. Respect the moment and those who rose to meet the moment — even when others don’t.
Here we are. Watching him become Him. In this game, in this Super Bowl, competing against, going after, trying to dethrone the HIM, is a new Him who can redirect the entire current mindset of football from within.
Behold, ladies and gentlemen, Saquon Barkley. He is the game within the game in this final game of an NFL season that, outside of the Chiefs — and arguably MVP Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and the decline of the Cowboys and Bears — was all about him. His transfer to the Eagles from the Giants, his transformation of the Eagles’ offense, his 60- and 70-plus-yard TD runs and leaping backward over defenseless defenses, his resurrection of the running-back position.
He’s being called “The New Hope.” “The difference-maker.” The focal point on the field as much as he has been the talking point off the field leading up to this game. The whole “You can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him” deal. “Can he be stopped?” asked on all corners of the sport’s underground synthetic turfed paradise.
Every sports show, every football show, football analysis, opinion piece, rant, post and text thread, every podcast, blog, sportsbook and sports book eventually written about this game. “Good Morning America” even interviewed the kids he babysat while he was in high school. That’s when you know you’re either under thorough, three-letter government-level investigation or you’ve arrived.
And after six seasons of living Barry Sanders’ football life in the Meadowlands, under a Giant cloud, Saquon Barkley is here. Him.
Yet, as much as this Super Bowl has been and will continue to be, as it unfolds Sunday, about Barkley’s role in whether the Eagles win or lose, the underlying matter of Barkley leading the Eagles back here for the team’s second appearance in the last three years is more of how he has possibly (maybe?) restored a modicum of long-overdue belief and faith in the true currency that running backs hold in building Super Bowl-aspiring teams.
We’ll see.
The reduction of the position that once ran the game (figuratively, literally, everything in between) has become a joke. A non-comical punchline that has shaped the way teams have approached building rosters. More drastically, a phase-out that has shaped the way the game of football is now played.
Money lost, money no longer gained. Respect? Even as SB appearances are achieved? Please. Running backs are football’s new DEI. Still, Saquon found a way to find himself in the regular-season MVP conversations with the second-strongest odds behind Patrick Mahomes of winning the same award in the Super Bowl.
Barkley’s just-signed three-year, $37.8 million deal that got him to Philly compared against Mahomes’ 10-year, $450 million contract isn’t even the proper perspective to put this in. “What he’s getting is equivalent to NBA bench-player money” is. “What he’s getting is MLB low-rotation starting pitchers money” is. “He’s making $2.5M less in total salary than quarterbacks Daniel Jones and Matt Stafford are making per season” is.
Does the math math? Of course it doesn’t. Not when we are talking about a player whose performance can force the NFL to have a conversation it doesn’t want to have. One about putting some respect back on running backs’ names. And contracts that should come with that respect.
Barkley (much like Christian McCaffrey, who last year was in both the Super Bowl and regular-season MVP conversations) should be valued more. Not by the fans or the media or the game itself, but by those in glass skyboxes who set the market value in the NFL for how players like “26” are valued.
Running toward a goalpost but not an embrace. Running toward a dream but not a reward. Running toward a Super Bowl ring but not the net worth that should be attached to it.
So, as we watch with joy as Saquon runs, there is a sadness that comes with it. The sadness of underappreciation, disrespect and the intent to reduce the significance of what this man does, and what others like him do and mean. A running back in this “all quarterbacks are gods” movement who has the opportunity — and the one-man ability — to disrupt history.
Going in not only to disrupt a possible Chiefs three-peat but also the ideology of NFL ownership. To destroy the whole narrative. Forcing them all to rethink the role his position plays in getting a franchise to this Sunday. A mission, for Saquon Barkley, that he proved ain’t impossible but is improbable at best. One that he has waited his whole life for. A mission that can make him HIM.
Just without the paycheck.