‘Dark times’ steel Saquon

Saquon Barkley’s phone buzzed in his locker stall with no one around to hear.

Just before the halftime whistle of the Eagles’ penultimate regular-season game, the running back received a text message from his longtime trainer Moe Gibson that he wouldn’t see until hours later.

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Gibson was watching Barkley attempt to make history from a powerless position, a few hours away and staring at the television screen. A decade spent on the grass with the star running back had formed a certain level of telepathy between the two, enough so that he could tell with each juke, cut, or burst upfield that Barkley executed that his proximity to greatness was front of mind.

Barkley wasn’t the only one. Gibson had noticed the “extra chip” on the running back’s shoulder in the months leading up to Barkley’s first year with the Eagles and was watching the work that followed materialize in front of him with increasing anticipation.

So with just 268 yards between Barkley and the NFL’s single-season rushing record going into the Week 17 game against the Dallas Cowboys, Gibson could feel that Barkley was pressing.

“It looked like he was trying to get 268 yards on every run,” Gibson said. “Instead of allowing it to just take what’s there.”

The Eagles are set to face the Green Bay Packers in Sunday’s wild-card round in large part because of Barkley’s historic season. It was one preceded by a rigorous offseason regimen tailored over the course of a seven-year career, one that featured Barkley pinging between a few longtime trainers that included Gibson and former Lehigh University receiver Troy Pelletier.

The focus was clear: longevity, endurance, and the expressed desire to prove he was still among the best players in the NFL embarking on the next chapter of his career.

“He had a fresh start and a fresh opportunity to rewrite a story,” Pelletier said. “It gave him a lot of enthusiasm and a lot to look forward to this season. You could kind of see it in his commitment all offseason, just how hard he went in those workouts.”

Sitting in the basement of the Whitehall High School field house a few weeks before training camp, Saquon Barkley seemed to know what would come next.

Perhaps not the specifics. Not the 2,005 rushing yards, the 345 carries or the 378 total touches, all of which were the most in the league during the regular season. What he did know was it was time to dismiss the years-old debate about the erosive nature of his position.

Given the fruitless, multi-year contract negotiations with the New York Giants and the apparent skepticism across the NFL about the viability of running backs with the workload Barkley has taken on during his career, it was understandable. A few months after signing a three-year contract with the Eagles worth $37.75 million, Barkley didn’t mince words about those who loudly wondered how he’d hold up during the duration of that deal.

“There’s this weird thing with running backs right now,” Barkley said on June 28. “Is it a difficult position to play? Yes. Do you take wear and tear? Yes. But who are you or anyone else to tell me how long I can play the game? I call [nonsense].”

“Some of the greats that I admire and I look up and study, they played well into their 30s,” he added. “Barry [Sanders] left at 29, 30 and he left in his prime. It’s what you put in, what you put in is what you get out. That’s any position.”

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But what does Barkley put in?

Two thousand yards later and a few days removed from logging 31 carries against the Cowboys, he joked with a friend that his body didn’t feel like it had just finished rushing for such a number. While Eagles coach Nick Sirianni elected to rest the majority of the team’s starters in the regular-season finale against the Giants, Barkley said he would have been happy to invite another 20-plus carries in pursuit of Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record if given the choice.

Part of the routine Barkley kept to stay fresh this season was plain to see. He typically goes through a circuit of light exercises at the start of Wednesday practices with Eagles senior athletic trainer Jerome Reid and was often listed as a limited participant during padded practices with a rest designation during the regular season.

Behind the scenes, Barkley’s teammates suspect he’s second only to right tackle Lane Johnson in total money and time spent on recovery and rehabilitation during the season. Some estimated his investment stretches into the six-figure mark annually while others went so far as estimating he’s around the $200,000 mark for recovery measures that include massages, cold tubs, recovery equipment, and physical therapy specialists to hasten his recovery process each week.

“He’s got people,” Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata said.

While Barkley didn’t have a specific number on what his annual expenditure is, he conceded his teammates are probably on the lower side.

“Definitely over. But I’ve had way higher in the past.”

“I don’t know the exact number, I’d have to call my financial adviser,” Barkley added. “But I’ve put a lot of money into it, whether it’s the offseason, whether it’s your training with trainers or physical therapists. That’s why I’m able to be the player I am right now. A couple high ankle sprains and a blown-out knee, to still be able to run at a high level and rush for 2,000 yards, it’s not by mistake. I believe in the quote that success is not an accident, it’s not only the work you put into training but the work you put into taking care of yourself.”

There’s a two-word refrain Gibson uses whenever he needs something more from Barkley during a training session.

“Dark times.”

Based in the Washington area, Gibson will typically travel to Barkley, first in Northern Jersey during his time with the Giants and closer to his native Whitehall last summer, and stay for three days to put Barkley through two daily workouts with a lifting session in between.

During that time, the former Villanova running back and Barkley will dive into the exacting nature of evading defenders.

The son of a boxer and the great-nephew of a former WBC middleweight champion, Barkley has a relationship with Gibson that can be likened to that of a boxer and a ringside coach. They pore over the action and the reaction that comes with every step or feint between a ballcarrier and a defender, closely mirroring the “sweet science” between the ropes.

Barkley, who even integrated boxing into his offseason regimen with his brother and uncle, said the parallels between the work he and Gibson do on the field and the work a fighter would do with his trainer isn’t a coincidence.

“There’s a reason why it’s like that,” Barkley said. “It comes from just the relationship that we’ve had since I was in college. He’s been with me through it all. ... He’s been with me with my ACL, during the down years, the dark times.”

Those “dark times,” from the torn right ACL Barkley weathered early in his career to a somewhat unceremonious exit from the Giants after multiple offseasons of stagnant contract negotiations, are why Gibson coined the phrase and repeats it during training sessions.

He’ll use the phrase on Barkley’s social media posts or text it to him at random points during the season as well.

“It’s like, ‘You got here through hard work,” Gibson said. “Throughout some of the years because of your injuries, people have talked bad or people have put this dark cloud over you like you’re a bad football player. It’s a reminder to him that everybody does not root for you, and that’s OK, because everybody didn’t root for you in the beginning.

“I train boxers as well, and there’s definitely a mentality he has. You keep swinging, you may fall, but you keep getting up and keep swinging. Because most people, when they do fall, when they feel the pressure or they’re reading the comments from social media or whatever it may be, some people fall into it. Sa’ is one of those people who continues to stand up, continues to fight, and continues to swing.”

The messaging was a constant for Gibson this offseason. The two typically met early in the morning at varying locations, wherever they could find grass. They’d break for a 90-minute lifting session afterward followed by lunch. Then, often as the sun went down, they’d get back out on the grass for another two-plus hours going through drills to iron out the details of evading defenders, with a camera recording the entire session.

During one session, the slightest undulation in the turf led to Barkley’s obsessing over the footwork of one of Gibson’s drills to the point where the trainer had to implore Barkley to move on. He needed to reach the cone in three steps, but it was taking him four.

“I know I can be very detailed about training,” Gibson said. “Like foot placement, stuff like that. And I remember one time he couldn’t get this one drill down and it killed him. It killed him to the point that we stayed on the drill longer than I wanted to be on the drill.”

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Barkley added, “The little details and stuff that we talk about on the thing, I love it. A lot of times, we’ll be filming stuff so we’ll have it on film where we’re talking about little details on a run or on a cut and how it applies to the game. And then, boom, you turn on the film Sunday in October and everything we talked about is happening within that run.”

Watching Barkley’s season mostly from afar, Gibson said, moments like that were the ones he remembered most.

“When he came in, he had a chip on his shoulder,” Gibson said. “He didn’t talk about it, but I could tell he did.”

Pelletier, another trainer Barkley would work out with often during the offseason, noticed it as well. He’d use his connections to a local high school football program to get the school’s field floodlights turned on for the two to start before dawn.

The two also go back about a decade, with Pelletier playing at Lehigh University while Barkley was graduating high school. When asked what stands out about Barkley, Pelletier said it’s the level of detail he brings to each drill.

“I think what separates a lot of guys, and this goes for a lot of the pros I work with, is that they’ve already got God-gifted talents that are above most people,” said Pelletier, who also trains Eagles wide receiver Jahan Dotson. “But their attention to detail is on another level. He’s really locked into the details at all times, and for someone as gifted and talented as him, his attention to detail? That’s what’s going to make him one of the best ever.”

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As Eagles players reconvened for the first walk-through of the week on Wednesday, Barkley caught his offensive teammates by surprise in the huddle.

“He’s like, that 2,000 [stuff] is over, it’s ... playoff time” Mailata said. “They’re about to find out. I was like, ‘Sir yes sir, let’s ... get it.’”

Regular-season accolades and endurance now behind him, Barkley’s next act begins against the Packers. It’s just his second trip to the postseason, with the first ending in a divisional-round loss against the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field in 2022.

After spending time studying athletes like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, Barkley isn’t afraid to feed into narratives. If there are any who doubt his capability to translate his regular-season success to the postseason, he’ll be sure to use those doubts, drawing on the evenings spent under the lights with Gibson this past summer.

“We’re still in dark times, dark times don’t change,” Barkley said. “Sometimes the smile allows people to have a different opinion or view me different, but I’m always in that mode. No matter how much is said, especially this year whether it’s 2K or All-Pro or whatever, we’re still in that ‘dark times’ mentality, it’s me, [Gibson], and we’re out there and nobody is going to spare me reps and he’s on my ass.”