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Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley had a chance to break Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing record on Sunday against the New York Giants, but Barkley didn't play. The Eagles already had the two seed and the division crown wrapped up, so Barkley sat to avoid injury. Eric Dickerson holds the record for most rushing yards in a season with 2,105, and Barkley came into Sunday's game with 2,005, needing 101 yards to break the record. He didn't play, and Dickerson agreed with that decision.
Records are great, but risking an injury right before the playoffs in a meaningless game isn't a smart thing to do. Saquon Barkley didn't take that risk, and Eric Dickerson thinks that it was a smart call as the Eagles wouldn't just be risking Barkley if he did play.
“I don’t know if he was disappointed, I’m sure he wanted to play but I was trying to explain to other people that you just can’t play him, you’d have to play everybody,” Dickerson said during an episode of the Let's Go Podcast. “You have to play the offensive line, you have to play the receivers. Especially the offensive linemen, you can’t put a bad offensive line in their with your star running back because something might happen, it might happen no matter what, but you can’t take a chance and get someone hurt, that’s the most important part. I told him I would trade those 2,000 yards for a Super Bowl in a heartbeat, that’s a no brainer.”
Had Barkley broken the record, we would've seen Dickerson celebrate him and the accomplishment. However, that doesn't mean Dickerson wanted the record to be broken. He wanted to hold onto it.
“If you have a record you want to hold onto them,” Dickerson said. “Bruce Smith called me and said what was going on with this record stuff, he said ‘man, nobody wants their record broke, I don’t want my record broke.' Then I called Lawrence Taylor just to see, you know how LT. is, I said LT. ‘let me ask you a question, I said you want your record broke?' He said, ‘hell no I don’t want my record broke, I want to hang onto the damn thing I'm too old now.’ We all try to hold onto our records for as long as we can.”
Dickerson noted that he did give Barkley a call to congratulate him on hitting the 2,000 yard mark, and he said that he wishes that Barkley did get a chance to break the record.
“I did talk to Saquon yesterday, I gave him a call congratulated him going to the 2,000 yards club,” Dickerson said. “I told him I would’ve liked to see him play at least a half to see if he had a chance to get it.”
Who knows what would've happened if Barkley had played on Sunday. If he did play, it would've been in an effort to break the record, but 101 yards in a game is no easy task. As for Eric Dickerson, he can rest easy knowing that his record will live on for at least one more season.
