Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley had one of the most dominant seasons in NFL history in 2024, and is getting the cover treatment ahead of the 2025 campaign kicking off.
On June 2, EA Sports announced that Barkley will be featured on the cover of Madden 26, specifically his iconic reverse hurdle against the Jacksonville Jaguars which served as one of his defining moments en route to winning the Offensive Player of The Year Award.
Barkley, 28, rushed for a career-high 2,005 yards with 13 touchdowns in his first season behind the Eagles’ dominant offensive line after signing as a free agent last March.
The former No. 2 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, out of Penn State, Barkley came just 100 yards shy of breaking Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record, but was a healthy scratch in the Eagles’ season finale with Philadelphia already locked in as the No. 2 seed in the NFC.
Barkley becomes the first Eagles player since Donovan McNabb to be the cover athlete of EA Sports’ Madden franchise, and looks to break the perceived “Madden Cover Jinx” which has seen several of the cover players besieged by injuries the season that they appear on the game.
Will Saquon Barkley Continue to Make History in 2025?
Barkley’s 2024 season will go down as one of the most dominant in Philadelphia Eagles franchise and NFL history, and sets a lofty bar to clear in 2025.
At least one NFL analyst is skeptical that Barkley will be able to replicate his historic level of production, this fall.
PFF NFL Analyst Nathan Jahnke is skeptical that Barkley will be as prolific this season, even though he’ll once again be running behind the premier offensive line across the league.
“Barkley is a talented running back who dominated fantasy leagues last season,” Jahnke writes for PFF. “With an unsustainably high rate of long touchdown runs. He will continue to be a great back who sees elite volume, which alone makes him a top-10 running back, but it will be hard to remain elite due to likely touchdown regression.”
“Barkley scored 60-plus-yard touchdown runs. At a rate that has never been seen in the history of the NFL. Barkley accomplished this seven times, including the playoffs, which is the most in NFL history in a season. There is a tie for second between Adrian Peterson in 2012 and Jim Brown in 1963, at four each. Barkley has 11 60-plus-yard touchdown runs in his NFL career, which ranks second behind Adrian Peterson’s 15 and ahead of Derrick Henry (9), Barry Sanders (8) and Chris Johnson (8). He had four such runs earlier in his career, so his 11 all-time ranks second to Peterson’s 15.”
In addition to Barkley’s 60-plus yard touchdown runs, he also rattled off a league-high 46 explosive runs of 10 yards or more, according to Pro Football Focus.
If Barkley can repeat that level of explosiveness and big-play ability, he might not be able to run down Dickerson’s record, but the Eagles’ offense has the potential to be among the most prolific in the league, once again.
Top NFL Draft Pick Aims to Emulate Eagles’ Saquon Barkley
Las Vegas Raiders running back, and No. 6 overall pick in April’s NFL Draft, Ashton Jeanty, has been drawing comparisons to Barkley for months.
Ahead of his rookie season, the former Boise State running back isn’t shying away from those comparisons, and has made following in Barkley’s elusive footsteps a goal for the 2025 campaign, and beyond.
“Most people, they watched the Eagles win the Super Bowl a couple of months ago,” Jeanty wrote, in a column for the Players’ Tribune ahead of the draft. “They watched Saquon run through everyone in the playoffs, and they thought to themselves, ‘This is amazing.’ I watched it and I thought something different. I thought, ‘That can be me.'”
It’s easy to see why people might look at Jeanty as the next Barkley, given that he rushed for 2,601 yards as a focal point of the College Football Playoff bound Broncos last fall, while averaging an explosive seven yards per carry and rushing for a career-high 29 touchdowns.
Whether Jeanty can live up to Barkley’s impact on the Eagles in 2024, this fall, could go a long way towards him winning Offensive Rookie of The Year, and the Raiders mounting an insurgent run at the playoffs in the AFC.
“I truly believe I was born to do this,” Jeanty wrote. “And I truly believe what makes me different … it isn’t about the position I line up at. It’s about the mindset I bring to it. If you pick me, it’s simple: I’m coming to your franchise to do what Saquon and the Eagles just did. I’m coming to win, big, soon.
“It’s tackle football. I’d draft the guy they can’t tackle.”
