Eagles Have Interesting Plan to Keep Saquon Barkley Fresh in 2025

The Philadelphia Eagles are about to walk a tightrope.

Saquon Barkley is the focal point of the offense, the engine that makes the ground attack run, and is  fresh off winning NFL Offensive Player of The Year and powering a Super Bowl championship with sights on a repeat performance.

However, if Barkley is going to stay healthy and on the field for at least 16 games for just the fourth time since being chosen No. 2 overall in the 2018 NFL Draft, the Eagles are going to need to take a different approach from last season’s 482 touches for the 28-year-old star.

“We’ve kind of talked about that, he and I have,” offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo said of Barkley’s workload, according to ESPN’s Dan Graziano. “I think it’s very game-specific. It depends on how the flow of the game goes. He does a really good job of knowing himself, of knowing when he needs to come out, when he wants to go back in. So a lot of that will be on him, obviously, during games, and he’s really good about paying attention to that.”

One area where the Eagles can maximize Barkley’s impact and limit his wear and tear is by leaning heavily into the play-action game by forcing defenses to respect his home-run ability without absorbing the punishing hits that come with 345 carries in 2024.

“Yes, I would love to be a run play-action team,” right tackle Lane Johnson told Graziano. “It makes things really fun up front. We were really balanced last year, so it was a lot easier in the passing game when you have somebody in the backfield that can do that. We’d like to have a similar approach this year.”

Saquon Barkley’s Trash Talk Fueling Eagles Defense

NFL training camp practices can be a grind.

Staged in the intense heat of the dead of summer, the elements and repetitiveness of hitting the same players day in and day out in practice can ratchet up the competitiveness.

Several Eagles defensive players, according to NBC Sports Philadelphia, say they have had added motivation from Barkley trash talking throughout practice.

“Just friendly competition,” Jalen Carter said. “That’s actually what I like, just have a little energy in practice. I know we can’t hit each other, we don’t want to hurt each other like that, but just give a little thud and let him know I was there. Just stuff like that. Just friendly competition.”

Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham, before his retirement this past spring, was a notorious trash talker on the field both during practices and throughout the games. While Barkley seems to be setting the tone with his brand of jarring, he has a long way to go to match up to his former teammate.

“He’s not BG-level. He needs to work on that,” Reed Blankenship said, according to NBC Sports Philadelphia, with a straight face before breaking into a huge grin. “He don’t scare me at all, you know what I’m saying?”