How Saquon Barkley became the greatest threat to Kansas City Chiefs history at Super Bowl 59 | NFL News

The Philadelphia Eagles are different this time. They have something different. Something they did not have the last time they attempted to topple the Kansas City Chiefs at the Super Bowl… a Saquon Barkley.

There aren’t many of them in this world. Only high-ranking NFL officials really know the whereabouts of the Stranger Things lab in which they are cooked up. Few can be trusted to use them safely. They are the perfect weapon for revenge.

Jalen Hurts summoned the game of his life this time two years ago as he went stride-for-stride with Patrick Mahomes in a straight shoot-out at Super Bowl LVII, only to come up shy in a 38-35 defeat. Nor he or the Eagles could have done much more, an iffy pass interference call against James Bradberry teeing up Harrison Butker’s game-winning field goal in the final seconds to ignite Kansas City’s pursuit of a three-peat.

Not only do the Eagles return armed with a juicier, considerably-improved defense – which just ranked No 1 during the regular season – but so too a game-titling haymaker in the backfield that has transformed Nick Sirianni’s offense into a read-option conundrum of the highest order.

The New York Giants should have never drafted Barkley with the No 2 pick in 2018. Not because he did not deserve to be chosen that high. But because they did not deserve him.

Or, rather, they were not ready for him. Nor were they adequately equipped to maximise the best player in the country, regardless of the seismic numbers Barkley would still somehow manage to go on and produce in New York.

For so long the offensive line was a rubble of mess scarce of clean avenues, while the Giants could not offer merely the notion of a consistent passing game threat that might create the mirage that they were anything but a Barkley-reliant attack. Even he could not compensate for such a level of predictability or multitude of roster holes.

But in Philly he is home, thriving in a tailor-made system with the premium supporting cast of which he is fully worthy. Starved of contention in the Big Apple, he is now the greatest threat to Kansas City’s ambitions of making history with a third successive Super Bowl win.

“Giant mistake letting him go,” joked Tom Brady on commentary after watching Barkley score his third touchdown in the Eagles’ 55-23 victory over the Washington Commanders at the NFC Championship Game. Giant, indeed.

Barkley signed a three-year $37.75m deal with the Eagles last March as the Giants allowed their prized asset to hit free agency after six seasons amid a reluctance to budge marginally on their own desired price and having ultimately hamstrung themselves with a long-term commitment to quarterback Daniel Jones, who they would go on to bench and subsequently release during the 2024 campaign.

While Brian Daboll’s side skidded to a 3-14 season that plunged them back in quarterback purgatory, Barkley became one of the most successful free agency acquisitions in history as just the ninth player ever to eclipse 2,000 rushing yards in a season. By the end of the year he had pulled away from Derrick Henry to finish as the NFL’s rushing champion with 2,005 yards in total and just 101 short of Eric Dickerson’s all-time single-season rushing record.

Barkley has since amassed 442 rushing yards in the playoffs, the second most by any player in the postseason prior to reaching the Super Bowl behind only John Riggins’ 444. He meanwhile arrives in New Orleans having posted 14 100-yard rushing games for the Eagles, and with just 30 more rushing yards needed to break Terrell Davis’ all-time single-season record (including playoffs) of 2,476, which has stood since 1998.

Rarely has salt been rubbed into the wound with such merciless vigour, Barkley’s eruption the reason Giants owner John Mara must stomach repeated reminders of his caught-on-camera admission he would ‘lose sleep’ if Barkley ended up in Philly during the offseason. Ah, the unforgiving beauty of Hard Knocks and its fly-on-the-wall vantage point.

If that wasn’t enough, Barkley later starred in a commercial for Unisom – a sleep aid specialist – in which he delivered a thinly-veiled jab at Mara’s remarks. The sleepless nights are showing no let up…

But Barkley-incited misery has not been exclusive to the Giants, for the rest of the league have too been forced to bear the brunt of his dominance at Lincoln Financial Field.

On debut in Week One he rushed for 109 yards and two touchdowns against the Green Bay Packers in Sao Paulo, and in Week Three torched the New Orleans Saints with 147 rushing yards and two scores at 8.6 yards per carry. In Week Seven he crushed boos on his return to New York with 176 yards and a touchdown on the ground at MetLife Stadium, and in Week Nine broke the internet, revolutionised football, defied logic, left a never-speechless Sirianni speechless and prompted Reed Blankenship’s best impression of Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’ painting with a backwards hurdle for the ages against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

It was football cinema, a mutant manoeuvre that would serve as the poster image for a staggering individual campaign. Barkley had leapt over a grown man, in a league filled with the best athletes on the planet, while moving at full speed… in reverse.

It deserved the hundreds of replays that would later follow, for the reactions along the Eagles bench alone. Jordan Davis is a personal favourite: he just shakes his head in disgust, almost sympathising with his humiliated Jags counterpart.

A decade earlier Barkley had been hurdling a Buffalo Bulls defender on his way to a 17-yard run during his second ever collegiate game at Penn State on September 12 of the 2015 campaign. Later that season he flew over another opponent after taking the snap out of wildcat formation in a victory over Illinois.

There had been stories of Barkley winning a competition to see who could jump over the most weight plates during his days at Whitehall High School in Pennsylvania… he won, obviously. Barkley was described as a quiet kid growing up in football, whose prospects of reaching the NFL had seemingly split opinion at youth level amid gradual development and the absence of any kind of ‘main character’ demeanour; how quickly the quietest kid on the field would begin to make noise.

His first instalment of Los Angeles Rams decimation this season came in Week 12 when Barkley put up 302 scrimmage yards and two touchdowns, including 255 yards on the ground, in a 37-20 win. It included a 72-yard house call by the end of which Hurts was captured sporting a smug smile in unspoken acknowledgement of the cheat code with whom he shares a backfield.

And with that arrived legitimate MVP contention as the running back fraternity turned to Barkley as the newest candidate in their bid to produce a first winner of the quarterback-dominated accolade since Adrian Peterson in 2012; only 13 MVP winners have been a running back in the Super Bowl era, by the way.

“You already the best running back in the world, I think you’re the best player in the world,” Brown was heard saying in a clip by NFL Mic’d Up.

In his final seven games of the season alone Barkley mustered 1,014 rushing yards, including six 100-yard outings, before being rested in Week 18. Having seen him knock out the Green Bay Packers on Wild Card weekend, the Rams then surrendered 205 more rushing yards to Barkley in the Divisional Round, capped by Saquon squinting through the snow as he raced away from helpless defenders in a slow motion-worthy scene straight from a movie on his decisive 72-yard touchdown late in the game.

And if there was anything to epitomise his one-punch knockout, it was Jayden Daniels and Washington seeing an 18-play seven-minute opening drive culminate in a field goal only for Barkley to break two tackles on the way to a 60-yard touchdown on the first play of the ensuing possession in the NFC title game.

Barkley enters the Super Bowl having accounted for 2,760 of Philadelphia’s 7,341 total yards on offense this season (including playoffs), equating to a percentage of 37.6. The Eagles led the NFL in rushing attempts with 659 ahead of Baltimore’s 584 as Barkley emerged as the obvious focal point to an offense that could also operate behind the ground exploits of Hurts while boasting a receiver tandem among the most talented in the league through AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith.

His home-run threat has been the difference: Barkley leads the league with seven touchdowns of 60-plus yards (including playoffs), nine runs of 50-plus yards, 10 runs of 40-plus yards and 13 runs of 30-plus yards, according to Pro Football Focus. He leaves opponents playing catch-up, he breaks games open, he swings momentum in an instant, he closes deficits, and he puts contests to bed.

It feels as though the Eagles have long paraded supremacy in the trenches behind Jeff Stoutland’s famed offensive line, within which he has coached Jordan Mailata into one of the league’s best left tackles while grooming a long-term successor to Jason Kelce in Cam Jurgens. With that Philadelphia’s attack has not ranked outside of the top 10 in rushing since 2019 (when they sat 11th), finishing second this season and as high as first in 2021 in that window.

That Barkley has elevated one of the league’s most accomplished running schemes in such a way is testament to a pedestal on which perhaps only Henry can claim a place alongside him. What was once an offense that could bait defenses with the athleticism of Hurts behind an offensive line of bulldozers and alongside a premium perimeter option in Brown and co. has been amplified in both complexity and damage by the introduction of Barkley. The elite of the elite, and a game-changer capable of deciding a championship.

Their defining test awaits on Sunday in a Steve Spagnuolo defense that has spearheaded Kansas City’s road to the Super Bowl in each of the last two seasons. The Chiefs faced four eventual top-10 rushers this season: they limited a second-ranked Henry to 46 yards as he averaged 117.2 yards per game against the rest of the league; they limited a third-ranked Bijan Robinson to 31 yards as he averaged 89.1 yards against all other teams; they limited an eighth-ranked Chuba Hubbard to 58 yards as he averaged 81.2 yards; they limited a 10th-ranked Bucky Irving to 24 yards as he averaged 68.6 yards per game. Across the season the Chiefs allowed an average of just 3.8 yards per game to running backs, good for second fewest in the league, while ranking eighth in rushing yards allowed and 11th in rush EPA.

Solve the Spags equation and you are a more-than-worthy Super Bowl champion. Lamar Jackson hasn’t been able to, Josh Allen hasn’t been able to, Hurts and the Eagles were not able to two years ago.

It would be easy to lean into the, still admittedly valid, argument that Barkley has defied league-wide apprehension over giving multi-year contracts to veteran running backs amid fear over the position’s longevity and the belief cheaper solutions can be discovered during a pass-first era for football. Between him, Henry and even the likes of Josh Jacobs in Green Bay and Joe Mixon in Houston, evidence points towards value. But not everybody is a Henry. Nor, certainly, is everybody a Barkley.

There have been no secrets regarding Barkley and his special abilities. Football had watched in awe as he juked around four defenders in a viral clip from Penn State’s Lion’s Den drill back in 2016 – something of a springboard moment for nationwide realisation of the freak brewing in college – and as he exploded for 305 scrimmage yards against Iowa in 2017, and as he won Offensive Rookie of the Year with 2,028 scrimmage yards in 2018 with the Giants, and as he jumped out of swimming pool holding a weight, and as he hurdled over America, and as he dashed through the snow.

Even then, he has shattered the ceiling on what had been expected this season from the best player on nearly any and every field these days.

For so long he has been the league’s dormant catalyst for devastation, supressed by an environment that could never provide the stage he warranted. Unleashed in Philly and with a license for havoc, he now has a chance to dethrone one of the NFL’s great dynasties.

The Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 59 at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday February 9, live on Sky Sports NFL and Main Event from 10pm ahead of kickoff at 11.30pm; 17-time Grammy-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar headlines the half-time show