Saquon Barkley did not want to talk about his body after the Philadelphia Eagles lost again on Sunday night. “I appreciate the question, but I don’t really want to speak too much about how I’m feeling,” the Eagles running back said after the 27-10 loss to the Washington Commanders. “It is what it is.” What he did want to talk about was his future, and he was clear. “I would love to be here,” he said. “I plan on being here.”
Barkley ran for 30 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries and caught one pass for 24 yards at Northwest Stadium. His 3-yard run in the first quarter put Philadelphia up 10-0, but Washington scored the next 27 points. The Eagles have now lost six straight games and are 2-6.
“Let’s just jump ship”
Hours before kickoff, Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo reported that the Eagles will not trade Barkley before the November 10 trade deadline. Asked about it after the game, and whether he wants to stay on a team that might miss the playoffs, Barkley said he does. “I don’t like the way the season’s going,” he said. “I’m not one of those guys that’s like, oh, the season not going where we going, let’s just jump ship.” He added: “Not the type of person I am.”
He said he sees the losing streak as something to fix from the inside. “We have a problem. We got to fix, and hopefully I could be one of the reasons why we fix it,” he said.
“My body’s not really where I need to be”
Barkley has been playing through hamstring and back injuries. He missed two games with the hamstring, then left last week’s Monday night loss to the Dallas Cowboys early with a back problem. He was cleared for Sunday after returning to practice on Friday. Asked what it took to get through the game, he said he did not want to make his injuries sound bigger than anyone else’s. “It’s football. Everybody’s going through something,” he said. But he admitted he is frustrated. “My body’s not really where I need to be right now,” he said. “I just gotta keep grinding and rehabbing, just continue to try to get stronger.”
He said the team had a plan for how much he would play. “We had an idea, and the game kind of just went the way it went, and really just focused on listening to my body,” he said. Asked how he will get through the last nine games, he said he will “just take one game at a time” and “be aggressive in my rehab, attack my rehab, and just get my body ready.” Asked whether any part of him questions if it is worth playing through injuries while the team is struggling like this, he answered with one word: “No.”
“We’re not the big bad Eagles anymore”
Barkley gave Washington credit. “They played a hell of a game. They were a better team today,” he said. But he kept coming back to Philadelphia’s own mistakes. “The mindset is to continue to stay together. But in reality, you know, we got to go back to little things and lock in our details. It keeps getting us beat,” he said. “We can have the belief, we can have the right mindset, we can be together, but we’re not doing the little things, and that’s every single body. We all have a hand in that.”
He said the Eagles have good weeks of practice that do not carry over to Sundays. “It doesn’t matter. It’s going to catch up to you, and it’s been catching up to us the whole year,” he said. “We can sit here and say all the excuses and the injuries,” he said, but “we’re not executing in that department and we got to do a better job.” He included himself. “There’s plays out there that I want back,” he said. “Look yourself in the mirror, go back, be honest about the film, be honest with yourself.”
He also said other teams now see the Eagles differently. “We’re not the big bad Eagles anymore, I guess, right? We got to understand that, but we still have the talent. We still have a lot of talent,” he said. “You see in this game, a lot of these young guys are making plays.” His message for the locker room was short: “We got to grow up fast, and the leaders got to step up.” He added: “Everyone say, oh, we’re beating ourselves. We really are … and that’s how you lose six in a row. So we got to fix that.”
Barkley has 274 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns on 56 carries in six games this season. The Eagles host the New York Giants on Sunday, November 8, at 1 p.m. ET, which is 8 p.m. in Cairo. It is their last game before the trade deadline.
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