Saquon Barkley is on the cusp of NFL history. If the Philadelphia Eagles running back can get just 268 yards over the final two weeks of the season, he’ll break Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record, which has stood for 40 years.
Dickerson set the record in 1984 when he rushed for 2,105 yards while playing for the Los Angeles Rams and after three decades of holding it, it sounds like the Pro Football Hall of Famer prefers to hold it for a few more decades.
During a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Dickerson didn’t try to hide the fact that he doesn’t want Barkley to break the hallowed record.
“Do I want him to break it? Absolutely not,” Dickerson said. “I don’t pull no punches on that. But I’m not whining about it.”
With Barkely needing to average 134 yards per game over the final two weeks, Dickerson thinks his record will be safe for another year.
“I don’t think he’ll break it. But if he breaks it, he breaks it,” Dickerson said.
When Dickerson set the record in 1984, there were only 16 games on the regular-season schedule, but that was bumped up to 17 in 2021, something the Dickerson is definitely aware of.
“He had 17 games to do it? Hey, football is football,” Dickerson said. “That’s the way I look at it. If he’s fortunate to get over 2,000 yards and get the record, it’s a great record to have.”
Dickerson probably won’t complain too much about the fact that Barkley is getting 17 games to break the record and that’s because he got to take advantage of a similar situation when he broke O.J. Simpson’s then-record.
Simpson held the rushing record before Dickerson and he set the mark of 2,003 yards during a 14-game season in 1973. Simpson was the first player to cross the 2,000-yard mark, and since then, it’s happened just seven more times. In the 30 years since Dickerson set the record, Adrian Peterson, who rushed for 2,097 yards in 2012, is the only running back who has even come within 35 yards of topping Dickerson’s mark.
The 27-year-old Barkley needs just 162 yards to reach 2,000 and if he does that, he’ll become the second-oldest player to hit 2,000 yards, trailing only Barry Sanders, who rushed for 2,053 yards as a 29-year-old in 1997.
If Barkley doesn’t break the record this year, Dickerson might end up holding it for a few more seasons. With most NFL teams turning to a running back-by-committee approach, it’s going to be rare to see a player do what Barkley’s doing. As a matter of fact, this is the fourth season of the 17-game schedule and in that time, only two running backs have even rushed for more than 1,700 yards: Jonathan Taylor in 2021 (1,811) and Barkley this year (1,838 heading into Week 17).
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