Will Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry help change the free agent market for NFL running backs? Barkley hopes so.

There are three NFL running backs entering this weekend who are rushing for at least 100 yards per game. They all have something in common. All three — Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley, and Joe Mixon — spent at least six seasons with their previous teams before those teams decided this past offseason they no longer needed their services.

Only one of those three, Henry, the current rushing leader by a wide margin, is 30 years old. But the life of a running back is such that Barkley, the youngest of the trio at 27, is no longer young.

Beyond the age and mileage on their legs is the other trend, one the Eagles running back hopes will be halted soon: NFL general managers have decided that the running back position is one that should no longer make up a sizable chunk of a team’s salary cap chart. They are, talent evaluators around the league have decided with their actions, easily replaceable parts.

Consider:

Barkley is the fourth-highest paid running back. Mixon is sixth. Henry is ninth. Barkley is one of just five running backs making more than $10 million. Maybe he’ll be a trendsetter, too, since his deal was the richest free-agent contract for an NFL running back since 2019.

“Thankfully my agent did a really good job for me,” Barkley said Friday.

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The Eagles should probably be thankful that they opened the vault and decided to pay more for a running back than they usually like to. There are a lot of moving parts on any given game day, but it’s hard to argue that Barkley isn’t the player most responsible for three of the Eagles’ four wins.

Barkley, who won the NFC’s offensive player of the week after rushing for 176 yards last week, was asked Friday if he thought what he and Henry were doing so far this season would change the trend of how the league views free-agent running backs.

“I know what analytics say, what numbers say,” Barkley said, “but it’s football at the end of the day. You need a running game. You got to be able to run the ball.

“Do I think it should change anything? I can’t really control that. That’s the narrative that was created by the GMs, and the owners, and the numbers guys. I don’t know if one year is going to change anything. It should.”

Christian McCaffrey, the injured San Francisco 49ers running back, is the highest-paid back in the NFL at $19 million per season, and Barkley mentioned him Friday as someone who “got paid the way he should be paid.” But 102 players in the league make more money per year than McCaffrey. Ten players on the Eagles make more money per season than Barkley, and one of them is James Bradberry. All 10 play positions the league has determined are more important than running backs: pass catchers, offensive linemen, edge rushers, defensive backs, and, of course, the quarterback.

“I don’t like pocket watching people, but Derrick Henry is definitely more important than a lot of guys in this league that’s making a lot more money than him,” Barkley said. “Obviously he’s probably satisfied with the money that he got, he’s been doing well for himself, but there’s a lot of people in a lot of different positions that aren’t even having half the year he’s having.”

To be fair to the “numbers guys” Barkley refers to, the numbers do say that the position he plays is less valuable than the others. Right behind Mixon on the yards-per-game list is McCaffrey’s replacement, Jordan Mason, whose cap hit in 2024 is $988,334. Mason is running proof that running backs can simply be products of the talent around them.

That topic was brought up to Barkley on Friday, that some teams prefer cycling through running backs on their rookie deals, and Barkley knew where the question was going so he jumped in before it ended.

“Why not think about that for a quarterback, though?” he said. “[49ers quarterback] Brock Purdy is a perfect example. They pick and choose.”

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Barkley brought up how recent years have featured repeat Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks. He understands the position is a premium one.

“You can look and search and try to find that guy, and Kansas City has that guy, but you can also have the formula where you get a guy on a rookie deal as a quarterback and you can pay a lot of people, too,” he said. “The way the money is going, the cap space is going, everyone should be getting paid. We should be getting paid what we deserve, not just my position, every position, and I think it should be guaranteed money. We play a physical sport. We literally put our lives on the line every single time we go out there.”

It is a bit absurd to compare NFL contracts to MLB contracts, but outfielder Juan Soto was set to take the field for the New York Yankees in the World Series on Friday night. When he hits the open market after the series, champion or not, he will command more than $500 million. That’s more than the three-time champion Kansas City quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, that Barkley mentioned. It’s double what Josh Allen makes. And, for the sake of the thing you’re reading right now, it’s more than 30 times what the Ravens are paying Henry, the player that just might run them all the way to a Super Bowl. All of that $500 million-plus will be guaranteed, too.

“Sports kind of rule the world,” Barkley said. “Everyone is watching. The revenue continues to go up. Hopefully, everyone gets paid.”

As for the teams that decided to not pay Barkley, Henry, and Mixon, who all play on teams with just two losses so far in 2024? Tennessee is 20th in rushing yards per game. The Giants are 25th. And Cincinnati, the team the Eagles play Sunday, is 28th. None of them have a winning record.

Whoops.

The Eagles play in Week 8 against the Cincinnati Bengals. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Paycor Stadium.