Philadelphia Eagles HC Nick Sirianni ruffled a lot of feathers by resting Saquon Barkley in the final regular season game. This prevents the RB from overtaking Eric Dickerson’s 40-year-old record for most rushing yards in a single season by an RB. What’s crazier? Barkley needed just 101 yards to break the record and etch his name in the NFL history books.
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While the Eagles head coach justified the benching decision by calling it his bid to protect Barkley from injuries for their Super Bowl run, former Bengals wideout Chad Johnson couldn’t buy this reasoning.
In the latest episode of Nightcap, Ocho didn’t mince words as he openly expressed his stance with one simple statement — injuries can happen anytime.
They can occur in the first minute of a playoff game, in the bathroom before a knockout game, or, of course, in the final regular season game. For Ocho, something with so many possibilities isn’t a strong enough reason to justify Saquon being disallowed from making history.
The former NFL star backed his stance by noting that it’s next to impossible to have back-to-back 2,000+ yard seasons in football. Barkley may never get the chance again.
“He will never get this opportunity again. The chance of having back to back 2,000 yard seasons are like slim to none. It’s very difficult to do and then people [are like] ‘Oh we trying to mitigate the risk of injury’. We are done playing 16 weeks of football. All of a sudden, we get to week 17 and now what are we talking about?… There’s a chance to get hurt anytime you step on the field.”
Nightcap co-host Shannon Sharpe agreed with Ocho’s take, as he also found Nick’s reasoning weak. The legendary TE argued that Barkley should have been allowed to play in the final regular season game, seeing his record pursuit and the Eagles winning the Super Bowl as mutually inclusive events.
That said, since the decision is already made, Shannon brazenly urged the Eagles to better win the Super Bowl so Barkley’s sacrifice doesn’t go in vain.
“If he doesn’t get the record, we can win the Super Bowl…they’re not mutually exclusive… They’ve got to win the Super Bowl now for if they don’t win the Super Bowl, [it will be] like bro, y’all did all that for what?”
After officially clinching a playoff spot, the Eagles had four more games to improve their rankings and manage Barkley’s workload. With qualification achieved so easily, one could question why Saquon Barkley’s work rate wasn’t better managed by the coaching staff to help the RB achieve his record.
For instance, the game against the Cowboys was a blowout win [41-7] for the Eagles. Despite the dominance, Barkley played the entire matchup. If Barkley and the O-Line had been subbed off by the third quarter by Nick Sirianni, could they have at least played two quarters against the Giants in the final regular season game?
It’s questions like these that make fans wonder if Nick Sirianni even tried to help his star player achieve the record. Rest, as the Nightcap hosts said, it’s truly sad to see Barkley being denied the opportunity to make history. At this point, all we can hope for Saquon is for him to carry his rich vein of form into next season and get another shot at the record.
