‘I let my team down today’: Saquon Barkley defends third-down call and takes the blame for Eagles loss

Jalen Hurts leaned in close as Saquon Barkley sat at his locker stall and, with a hoarse voice, the Eagles quarterback told Barkley that he trusts him every time with the game on the line. Hurts extended a fist, Barkley gave it a bump with his own, and the running back then started to get dressed.

There’s an uncomfortable thing that happens in professional football locker rooms. Some reporters and camera operators watched that interaction and then, inch by inch, as Barkley clothed himself, they moved closer to his stall. Barkley knew what was coming. He’s new to the Eagles but not new to a big media market.

You need both hands to count the number of reasons the Eagles lost to Atlanta on Monday night, maybe even a few toes, but if you isolate one play that flipped the whole thing, it was Barkley dropping a third-and-3 throw from Hurts with the Eagles ahead by three, the clock inside the two-minute warning, and the Falcons out of timeouts.

“I make that catch, game’s over,” Barkley said.

Instead, the incomplete pass forced a fourth down, stopped the clock, caused the Eagles to kick a field goal, and opened the door for an improbable game-winning drive by Kirk Cousins, who torched the Eagles’ secondary, going 70 yards on six plays in 1 minute, 5 seconds to silence the Lincoln Financial Field crowd.

“I dropped the ball,” Barkley said. “I let my team down today. Shouldn’t have put the defense in that position.”

There will be quibbling over the play call for days. Why didn’t the Eagles run the ball, take more time off the clock if they didn’t convert, and kick a field goal if needed, giving Cousins and the Falcons offense less time to score? There are still unanswered questions, too, about the sequence that led to the drop. Prior to the play, the Eagles put a heavy package onto the field with an extra tackle, Fred Johnson, and called a timeout before the play clock expired. It’s unclear what the plan was, but Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said it did involve taking that timeout. But the ensuing package didn’t feature Johnson.

“They were running a certain defense and junking it up in the middle, so we were trying to go around the outside and it didn’t work,” Sirianni said.

It is probably being too results-oriented to just blame the play call. Barkley was wide open, and Hurts put the ball right on his hands. There were elements of risk involved in the call, sure, but the Eagles got their best offensive player — with A.J. Brown out of action — open and threw a high-percentage pass in his direction.

Barkley said he wasn’t surprised by the decision to throw. It is a play the Eagles have had plenty of reps running, he and Hurts both said.

“Once I knew it, I thought it was a great play call,” he said. “I just got to make the catch.”

» READ MORE: Eagles grades: Jalen Hurts solid until his game-clinching interception, defensive line struggles vs. Falcons

Had the Eagles won Monday, it would have been largely because of Barkley and Hurts, who combined for 180 rushing yards. Instead, in a cruel twist, it was Barkley’s drop and Hurts’ poor decision on the final drive, after the Falcons took the lead, to throw an ill-advised deep ball into the hands of a waiting Jessie Bates.

Barkley, through two games, has been as good as advertised. He has rushed for 204 yards and has three total touchdowns. He has added another 44 receiving yards with six catches on seven targets. It’s that final stat, though, that has the Eagles at 1-1 instead of 2-0, with two tough road games in New Orleans and Tampa Bay next on the calendar.

“We just didn’t make the play in that moment, and I trust him in every moment,” Hurts said. “He’s a hell of a player. He gave us a big spark in those moments, and it just wasn’t for us tonight.”

Said safety C.J. Gardner Johnson: “It’s football, bro. [Stuff] happens. You can’t fault a guy for making one mistake. It’s other things that led to a loss, but you can’t fault one guy and put one thing on somebody’s shoulders for a whole game.”

It was, however, one of the easiest places to point, and Barkley wasn’t looking to point anywhere else.

“I could sit here and complain and be upset about it or I could be a professional athlete and go back to the drawing board and take the lick and move on and get better from it,” Barkley said. “I’ve made that play multiple times. I’ve missed that play before, too. I just got to be better. I let my team down. I got to man up to it, I got to own it, which I’m doing. I could promise those guys in this locker room that I’m going to be better from it.

“It definitely sucks. Any loss sucks. But the game comes down to a few plays and it hurts a little more when you’re the one who’s making a mistake on that play.”