Saquon Barkley can make running backs glamorous again. And win the Eagles some games in the process

On the August afternoon when he spoke publicly as a Philadelphia Eagle for the first time, Saquon Barkley dropped the names of the running backs he aspired to emulate, the best of the very best. Walter Payton, Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders — Barkley mentioned them all, but he never did betray that day how deep into the past his memory goes when it comes to the position that he was born to play.

“I always wanted to be a running back,” he said Thursday at his locker at the NovaCare Complex, and he brought up Payton and Sanders again. But his list of idols didn’t stop there. Suddenly, Barkley started offering a roll call of running backs from the early 2000s, players whose careers were wonderful but whose names, once among the most recognizable in the NFL, don’t immediately leap to mind anymore.

“Edgerrin James, Thomas Jones, Curtis Martin, Fred Taylor, Matt Forte,” he said. “There were a lot of guys I watched as a little kid growing up.”

No one had a bigger game or a better debut in this season’s first week than Barkley did — his three touchdowns in the Eagles’ victory in São Paulo, Brazil, over the Packers, his 109 rushing yards, his display on an international stage of what a great running back can still do. He’s one of a few players in the league who can meet that standard of being so special. The 49ers’ Christian McCaffrey does, when he’s healthy. The Falcons’ Bijan Robinson, whom the Eagles will see up close Monday night, can. And after an opening weekend in which just two quarterbacks threw for more than 300 passing yards but seven backs rushed for more than 100, Barkley sees football returning to its foundation, to a place where teams start placing the proper value on what he can do.

» READ MORE: The Eagles’ victory over the Packers was weird in a lot of ways

“It’s the thing to talk about in media, but I don’t look at it as bringing pride back to the running back position,” he said. “From the beginning of football, you’ve got to be able to run the ball, whether it’s at the beginning of the season or if you want to make that late run. You’ve got to be able to run the football. I take pride in that. I take pride in playing in the position. Throughout the league, there are a lot of backs who, if they’re playing well, their teams will be in position to win football games.”

That once-universal philosophy has been, of course, regarded as prehistoric for a while in many quarters of the sport. No wonder. Over generations now, the NFL has been changing its rules to incentivize teams to throw the ball more, which has incentivized teams to go star-hunting for quarterbacks, which has incentivized those teams that do find star quarterbacks to pay them more — a cycle that keeps spinning until a very good quarterback like Dak Prescott gets a contract worth $60 million a year and a pass-catching tight end like Travis Kelce becomes the most popular product-pusher in the sport.

For running backs, the glamour has been gone for a while. They’re usually viewed as fungible. More often than not, the physical punishment they absorb is so debilitating, their careers are so brief, and the half-life on their usefulness is so short that they’re no longer worth a high first-round draft pick, major money, or a contract longer than a year or two.

“That’s definitely a narrative that’s out there, and you’ve seen it more and more as the passing game and wide receivers have become so developed and have so much skill,” said Will Shipley, the Eagles’ rookie tailback and kick returner. “We’ve got our fair share of good receivers here, but you’ve got to find a way to make yourself indispensable. You see guys like Saquon and CMC, and, yeah, maybe you can fill their role for a short-term period. But what they do in the long run is something that can’t be replaced.”

That was the New York Giants’ thinking when they took Barkley with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2018 draft. It was a daft decision — not because Barkley wasn’t a great player at Penn State, maybe the best player relative to his position in that entire draft, but because the Giants had so many deficiencies and needs that Barkley, even at his best, wouldn’t help them that much. Sure enough, he rushed for 1,307 yards, caught 91 passes, and scored 15 touchdowns … for a 5-11 club that finished dead last in the NFC East, and all the chatter and criticism about the Giants’ mistake stayed with him.

» READ MORE: Jalen Carter has a chance to be great

“I definitely heard that and saw that,” he said. “But in reality, it’s a team. That’s what really matters. After I got drafted, my first year, I had more than 2,000 all-purpose yards, and we weren’t that bad on offense, statistically. Defensive-wise, we struggled on that side, so we weren’t able to win games. We lost eight games by seven points or less my rookie year. We find a way to grind out those wins, and that’s probably looked at differently. At the end of the day, no matter what, whether you’re paying running backs $240 million or you’re drafting running backs in the second round, it all comes down to the team.”

The one that’s around him now is better than any of the ones he knew in New York: a better offensive line, a better quarterback, better and wiser coaching. At least, the whole setting should be better. Maybe, here with the Eagles, Saquon Barkley gets to remind everyone in and around the NFL what a great running back can do. Not that he ever forgot.