In 2024, the Philadelphia Eagles turned in one of the best rushing seasons of all time.
Led by the one-two punch of running back Saquon Barkley and quarterback Jalen Hurts, the Eagles rushed for 3,048 yards and 29 rushing touchdowns during the regular season and added 818 more yards in the playoffs on the way to their second Super Bowl win in less than a decade.
Barkley earned all sorts of awards and accolades for his efforts, including the AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year, No. 1 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2025 list, and the cover of Madden 2026, and despite rushing for 2,857 on the season, he was afforded a new two-year, $41.2 million extension from Howie Roseman for a job well done.
And yet, in 2025, Barkly hasn't looked like a $20.7 million player, or even a $2.7 million player, but instead an over-the-hill performer who has lost that extra gear that made him so darn successful earlier in his career.
Now granted, some of that is to be expected, as Barkley led the NFL in rushing attempts and total touchdowns during the regular season and added 104 more touches in the playoffs on the way to a Super Bowl win. Even after missing time in New York, Barkley has still touched the ball 2,216 times during his career, which is a ton for a player who will turn 29 right around the Super Bowl.
Should the Eagles bench Barkley? On paper, one could make that argument, but football isn't played on paper, with the interpersonal aspect of the game a big reason why Nick Sirianni has been retained by Jeffrey Lurie when his on-field results have struggled. Barkley is a captain, a very popular player in the locker room, and arguably the team's best player when he's hitting his ceiling. Even if he's only averaging 62.2 yards per game on the ground, roughly half of his total from last season, on a 3.7 yards per attempt average, sending him to the bench or IR with a phantom injury could seriously impact a locker room that has already dealt with its fair share of issues in a negative way.
Fortunately, there is a solution to the Eagles' issues that could allow them to have their cake and eat it too, keeping Barkley in the mix while allowing him to optimize his production instead of hammering out rush after rush in the hopes that one run or another will magically go for 50: Tank Bigsby.
The Eagles need to embrace Tank Bigsby as their RB 1B
Which Eagles player has the highest yards per attempt average so far in 2025? Is it Barkley? Or maybe Hurts? How about a dark horse like Will Shipley, or even AJ Dillon, who has only appeared in six games so far this season?
The answer is Bigby, who has recorded 164 rushing yards on 18 attempts for a 9.1 yards per carry average.
Now granted, the sample size is small, as Barkley averages more than 18 carries a game, but after failing to get many opportunities to run the ball this season, when he does see the field, he hits his holes with a level of violence that No. 26 simply doesn't bring to the table at the moment.
Against the New York Giants, Bigsby recorded his first and to this point only triple-digit game of the season, and did so efficiently, getting his 104 yards on just nine carries, while Barkley needed 14 to get to 150, and that included a 65-yard run that marks his longest of the season. Bigsby recorded 34 more yards against the Detroit Lions on four carries, and even against the Dallas Cowboys, his lone rushing attempt went for eight yards, which, considering Barkley averaged 2.2 yards per carry in Week 12, marked the best individual run by a Philadelphia back on the night.
Again, the sample size is small, but in Jacksonville last season, Bigsby averaged 4.6 yards per attempt on 168 rushes and again turned in some very exciting zone runs not too dissimilar from Barkley, even if he did so almost exclusively as a backup.
Now granted, even if Bigsby does earn a more expansive workload for the Eagles down the stretch, splitting carries 40-40-20 with Barkley and Shipley, who was slotting in as the team's third-down back, that won't magically fix the team's problems. Patullo has developed a knack for calling run plays that go right into where the defense is positioned, and his offensive linemen haven't exactly been pulling their end of the bargain, with Cam Jurgens specifically struggling mightily against both the pass and the run when he's been healthy enough to see the field.
And yet, after watching Barkley turn in arguably his worst game as an Eagle on national television against the Cowboys, can the team really count on getting 100 yards from the Penn State product even if they give him 25 carries per game? While it may not be the most popular decision with the reigning AP Offensive Player of the Year, the Eagles might just have to give Bigsby a bigger role moving forward; otherwise, they will risk forever limiting their ceiling with a one-dimensional offensive attack.
Heading into the 2025 NFL season, fans hoped Roseman would use a draft pick or sign a solid enough player in free agency to form more of a platoon at running back in order to keep Barkley fresh for the playoffs. Dillon didn't end up being that player, and their big running back addition, UDFA Montrell Johnson Jr., has yet to see the field. But in Bigsby, the Eagles have a genuinely exciting young back who thrives in a zone-run blocking scheme. Even if the path they took to get there is somewhat unusual, why not embrace what many hoped before the season and save some wear and tear on Barkley by giving half of his carries to Bigby? Worst case, the run game remains underwhelming, but the possibility is there that the third-year RB ends up being the spark Philadelphia needs to regain their run-first identity, all the while galvanizing Barkley to maximize his on-field production along the way.
