Eagles-Rams analysis: Saquon Barkley reaches historic heights as the Birds march to seventh straight win

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Not far from Hollywood, a familiar movie played out inside SoFi Stadium.

The Eagles, behind a running back worthy of his own Hollywood star and an offensive line built to bully opposing defenses and make room for him to run, exerted their will on the Los Angeles Rams.

Saquon Barkley took a handoff from Jalen Hurts on the first play from scrimmage in the second half and plowed through a hole. He reached the first-down marker and deftly cut to his right, a cut Nick Sirianni said he “didn’t think anyone else could make,” and with three accelerating steps he was off and running with no Rams defender capable of catching him. Barkley’s 70-yard touchdown run gave the Eagles a two-score lead after a first half that was a little back and forth.

It was the quick strike the Eagles needed, and it gave a defense that continued its dominant ways plenty of breathing room to work with in an eventual 37-20 Eagles win Sunday night.

The Eagles were heading back east with their seventh consecutive victory, and a three-game lead in the loss column on the Washington Commanders, who lost earlier in the day.

Here’s our instant analysis from the Eagles’ win.

Is it possible for someone to have a quiet 73-yard half? That’s what it felt like Barkley had at halftime Sunday. The Eagles handed to him 13 times, and besides one 11-yard run, Barkley kept getting chunk gain after chunk gain.

Then came the game-busting burst to begin the second half. The Eagles led 13-7 at the break, but Barkley’s score blew the game open and put him over 100 yards for the seventh time this season, one shy of Wilbert Montgomery’s franchise record of eight 100-yard games in a season.

“He put his left foot in the ground and went around the edge and hit the gas,” Sirianni said.

Barkley, of course, wasn’t done. With the Eagles killing time late in the fourth quarter, Barkley exploded for another long run, a 72-yard score that put him over 200 yards for the first time in his NFL career and made Sunday’s score a laugher.

Barkley ended the day setting an Eagles single-game record with 255 rushing yards on 26 carries. He had another 47 yards on four catches. Barkley, the league’s leading rusher, has more rushing yards than the entire New York Giants team does through 11 games, and his 1,392 yards are a career-high for a single season. The Eagles still have six more games.

The second of the two long scores was a counter that Barkley said could have popped earlier but didn’t. He said he told Hurts to trust the play and trust that tight end Grant Calcaterra would block it.

“He did a really good job of pulling and setting a block for me and I was able to rip it and hit a home run,” Barkley said.

Asked about the big holes, Barkley said the guys in front of him are “amazing.”

“They make my job a lot easier,” he said. “I’m probably going to get a lot of credit and everyone’s going to say this and say that. But in reality, the beauty of this game is, it’s a team game. And my favorite quote that Nick always says, ‘It’s hard to be great without the greatness of others.’”

It looked early on like it would be a long day for an Eagles defense that has vaulted itself to the top of the NFL’s defensive rankings. The Rams moved the ball at will on their first two drives, and thanks to a forced fumble by Isaiah Rodgers that was recovered by Nakobe Dean on the first Rams drive, only one of those early series resulted in points — the second one, which Kyren Williams finished off with a 1-yard score to give the Rams a 7-3 lead after one quarter.

The Rams tallied 8.4 yards per play on those first two drives. Matthew Stafford had time and targets to throw to. But the Eagles responded quickly. The final three drives off the half all went three-and-out with an average of 0.33 yards per play.

“We knew that they had a lot of motion pre-snap, post-snap,” Eagles safety Reed Blankenship said. “You can watch it on film all you want, but you got to have a feel for it when you go in. I feel like once we settled down and saw what they were trying to do … that’s when we started settling in and trusting each other to do our jobs.

“It wasn’t really a whole lot of adjustments. It was just playing our ball, playing with our eyes, and knowing what we’re supposed to do.”

Blankenship said quick fixes have been a constant all season. He credited the sideline communication between coaches and players with getting the job done.

“We don’t have to wait until halftime to make a big adjustment,” he said. “We can just do it on the sideline, lock everybody in and go.”

Once Barkley gave the Eagles the two-score lead, the rushers were able to more frequently get to Stafford. The Eagles piled up five sacks. Milton Williams led the way with two. Dean, Josh Sweat, and Brandon Graham each had one.

Barkley’s recent performances, and the Eagles’ focus on a run-first attack, has made it so that Hurts doesn’t have to be perfect or even that explosive with his arm for the Eagles to win. That was the case again Sunday, though Hurts was in total control of the offense when he wasn’t handing off to Barkley.

He tucked it and ran himself when he had to, and when the Eagles needed completions, he mostly delivered. He was 11-for-13 in the first half, and one of those two misses was an intentional throwaway.

The Eagles were without DeVonta Smith, but with Barkley running rampant and A.J. Brown looking every bit like one of the best receivers in the NFL, Hurts had plenty to work with.

Hurts completed just four passes after halftime, going 15-for-22 on the night for 179 yards. His lone touchdown throw was a perfectly-placed ball to Brown late in the second quarter that sent the Eagles into halftime with a lead they never relinquished.

Brown pulled in six catches for 109 yards.

Two Eagles left Sunday’s game and did not return: Darius Slay with a concussion, and Graham with a triceps injury he later said in the locker room would end his season.