If his many endorsements weren't a clue, Saquon Barkley is still basking in the glow of a career year that ended in a Super Bowl triumph.
It could be influencing his rationality when judging where his 2024 Eagles rank in football history. Barkley confidently claimed his team was one of the greatest ever assembled in the history of the NFL when speaking with Philadelphia teammates Reed Blankenship and Cooper DeJean on their "Exciting Mics" podcast.
"I firmly believe when you look at our team that we had last year -- I know we're not looking too far into the past -- but our team last year, I think we're a top-five team of all time," Barkley said in an episode that was published on Thursday. "I tell my boys this all the time. We started off 2-2, and we lost to Washington. Jalen [Hurts] got hurt that game. But if you really look at the season outside the first four games, it was belt to ass. How dominant you guys were on defense and how dominant we were on offense and special teams, people don't realize how great of a team that actually was."
Barkley has a point. Philadelphia was lurking in the swamp's tall grass early in the season while determining its identity and decided to reveal itself for the first time in a Week 7 win over the Giants, striking New York and suffocating it in a 28-3 victory. It was the first example of what the Eagles could be at their best, which largely became their modus operandi as the season entered the winter months. From Weeks 8-18, the Eagles outscored their opponents, 329-188, going 10-1 to close the regular season.
The 2024 season wasn't a montage of dominance, though. The Eagles won five of those games by a single possession, lost in heartbreaking fashion on the road at division rival Washington (in part because Hurts exited due to injury), and didn't enter the postseason as the favorite to win the NFC (the No. 1 seed belonged to the 15-2 Detroit Lions).
Of course, the final results are what matter most, and the Eagles made a resounding statement with their complete dominance of the two-time defending champion Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. That win was so lopsided, it didn't even matter that Barkley didn't do much to help the Eagles prevail as he was held under 100 total yards and without a touchdown.
"I think we all just bought in," Barkley said. "You hear the outside noise and expectation. We didn't care how it looked. The only thing we cared about was winning football games. When you have the talent and skill that we have on our team mixed with the coaches, we all play together like how we played, teams really stood no chance. You've seen that in the playoffs. You've seen that in the Super Bowl. The score finished 40 to 20-something, but in reality, it wasn't even really a game."
Barkley has certainly earned the right to puff out his chest and hold his head high when talking about the 2024 Eagles. Placing them among the all-time greats, however, requires a bit of bias at this point.
"I really think when we look back on it in 10 to 15 years, and we're all old and we're reflecting on our glory days – hopefully next year, the year we're in right now -- but the year that we had last year, people don't give us enough credit," he said.
Time -- and we're likely talking a decade or more from now -- will ultimately tell. His case will get much stronger if the Eagles can repeat their success in 2025, but there's plenty of work to complete before that becomes reality.
