Saquon Barkley In the 2,000-Yard Club: Analyzing His Place Among NFL's Greatest Rushing Seasons

NFL fans missed out on witnessing a record chase in the final week of the 2024 regular season when the Philadelphia Eagles opted to rest Saquon Barkley when he was 101 yards away from breaking Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record, which has stood since 1984. 

Considering Barkley averaged 125.3 yards per game this season and Philadelphia’s Week 18 opponent — the New York Giants — conceded 136.2 yards per contest, he probably would’ve broken the record if he played the whole game. However, before the season finale, Philadelphia had already clinched the second seed in the NFC with only a five percent chance of earning the top seed in Week 18.

With little to gain, the team thought they’d benefit more from having Barkley rest up for the playoffs than pursue the record. That decision is up for debate, but what’s clearly true is that the Eagles running back (RB) has put together one of the best rushing seasons in NFL history, even if his name won’t go into the record books.

Barkley has produced one of just nine 2,000+ rushing-yard seasons in NFL history. Below is the complete list in chronological order:

• O.J. Simpson 1973
• Eric Dickerson 1984
• Barry Sanders 1997
• Terrell Davis 1998
• Jamal Lewis 2003
• Chris Johnson 2009
• Adrian Peterson 2012
• Derrick Henry 2020
• Saquon Barkley 2024

This research aims to determine where his 2024 season ranks among those legendary campaigns. 

An extremely simplistic way to rank the 2000-yard seasons would be by total yardage gained, which would put Barkley eighth, but that doesn’t leave much room for nuance. 

It’s relevant how efficient an offensive weapon he was compared to the other running backs. For example, Barkley rushed for three fewer yards in 2024 than Terrell Davis did in 1998, but he did so on 47 fewer carries. Looking at yards-per-carry (YPC) gives us a sense of how the running backs in our sample did with the opportunities given to them. 

Among all the 2,000-yard rushing seasons, Barkley’s YPC in 2024 (5.8) ranks fourth, but a little more context helps us better understand how efficient he was. To drill down on his efficiency, we’ll look at YPC of these nine seasons through two different lenses:

1. YPC vs. League Average: Certain eras of the NFL have been more or less friendly to rushing offense. When comparing players who played decades apart, it's important to recognize what their offensive environment was like and how much they stood above their peers.
2. YPC vs. RB Teammates: Many of the most sophisticated statistics about offensive line play were created more recently than the seasons this study deals with, which goes back to 1973. So we’re creating a workaround to estimate how good the 2,000-yard rushers' blocking was by looking at the YPC of the other running backs on their team. If the 2,000-yard rushers were far better than players at their position who were running behind the same offensive line, it would reflect well on them. 

Unsurprisingly, every running back who accumulated 2,000 yards in a season was above league average in YPC and had a better YPC average than their RB teammates. 

The scatter plot below shows the extent of their superiority by each measure:

These results are impressive for Barkley against his teammate, considering his 5.8 YPC is 65.7% better than the other RBs on Philadelphia’s roster (3.5). 

At the same time, it’s noteworthy that Barkley’s efficiency comes in a season where rushing the ball has been more effective than usual. Just one season in NFL history (2022) has a higher average YPC than 2024’s 4.4 YPC. For a point of comparison, when Dickerson set the single-season record, the NFL average was 4.0. Barkley’s YPC was still 31.7% above the NFL standard in 2024, ranking seventh in our sample.

Before we move on, one season here deserves a notable caveat as this scatter plot tells a story about Sanders that is slightly misleading. Based on these numbers alone, you might get the impression that the Detroit Lions legend was working behind a juggernaut offensive line because he was far better than his peers around the league but hardly better than other Lions running backs. 

The reality is that the Sanders vs. Lions RBs comparison suffers from a small-sample-size issue. Detroit gave other players at the position a minuscule 29 carries in 1997. If you watch a Sanders highlight package from that season, you’ll see he does far more than hit the holes his offensive line opens.

Another way to measure these seasons against each other is to look at the rushing success of these RBs' teams. If they didn’t move the ball on the ground particularly well, then the RBs in question were accumulating elite statistics in a way that wasn’t really driving team success on the ground.

As you’ll see, it is difficult to have an RB with 2,000 rushing yards on your roster and not thrive on the ground overall. In 2024, 20 of the NFL’s 32 teams fell short of Barkley’s 2005 rushing yards.

By virtue of looking at 2,000-yard seasons, what we’re doing here is comparing excellence to excellence, though. 

In this case, we’re doing it by three measures:

1. Team Yardage Rank: Because NFL norms around the distribution of rushing and passing plays have changed significantly over the years, we’re focused on how these running back’s teams did relative to their peers. For example, Simpson’s 1973 Buffalo Bills rushed on 71.26% of their offensive plays, and the 2024 leader for team rushing percentage was Barkley’s Eagles at 55.75%. So, we’re measuring team success by the NFL ranking of total yards gained on the ground rather than the raw total itself.
2. Team First Down Rank: The rationale for looking at rankings instead of totals remains consistent here. First downs are a critical measure of offensive success. In 2024, the top seven teams by first downs gained per game were also the top seven teams in points per game, just in a slightly different order.
3. Team First Down Percentage Rank: Because this is a rate statistic as opposed to a totals-based one, it’s more comparable across eras, but for the purposes of this section, it’s best to focus on rankings to keep things consistent. This metric shows the percentage of rushing attempts that result in first downs.

By those three measures of team rushing success, we get results that look like this:

The first clear takeaway is that there’s not much differentiation regarding yardage rank, as each 2,000-yard RB has led their team to first or second place on the NFL rushing-yard leaderboard.

Barkley is one of just two of the nine RBs whose teams led the NFL in rushing first downs alongside Davis. There would appear to be an important caveat as the Philadelphia Eagles often use a modified quarterback sneak with Jalen Hurts, sometimes known as the ‘tush push’ to gain rushing first downs in short-yardage situations. In 2024, Hurts ranked 10th among all rushers with 62 first downs.

However, despite the impact of Hurts, Barkley’s work collecting first down is similar to many of his 2,000-yard rushing peers. 

NFL.com data on individual rushing first downs goes back to 1991, omitting Dickerson and Simpson, but Barkley’s numbers aren’t out of line with the rest of the group — outside of Davis and Henry, who excelled by this metric.

The first-down percentage for Barkley’s Eagles is surprisingly low, particularly considering the success of Hurts converting short-yard opportunities. Barkley has something to do with that, considering his personal first-down rate (23.8%) ranks a solid — but not elite — ninth among the 23 RBs who had 200 or more carries in 2024.

That is probably best explained by the fact that Barkley has a more volatile rushing profile than some of his contemporaries. In 2024, he led the NFL in rushes of 10+ yards (46) and 40+ yards (7), but only two running backs suffered more tackles for a loss more often than the Eagles star (33).

It’s interesting that no 2,000-yard rusher ever led his team to an NFL-best first-down percentage, but it may be easier in some cases for other teams to top that category with a less frequently-used rushing attack that catches opponents by surprise. 

For instance, in 2003, when Jamal Lewis and the Baltimore Ravens were inefficient at gaining first downs on the ground, the San Diego Chargers led the NFL in first-down percentage on rushes (28.1%) despite only six teams attempting fewer total rushing attempts.

If we’re going to credit elite running backs for their teams’ rushing success, we should ask how much they contributed to it.

We’ll answer that question by identifying the percentage of their team’s rushing plays and total offensive plays that their carries represented. 

We’ll also dive into the percentage of their team’s rushing yardage and total offensive yardage generated by those carries.

That gives us results that look like this:

This is where we start to see Barkley falling behind some of the 2,000-yard club:

• Only Simpson accounted for a lower percentage of his team’s rushes, and as mentioned above, the 1973 Bills were a team that rushed the ball far more than any modern offense. Outside of Barkley and Simpson, each rusher here accounted for between 70% and 74.9% of their team’s rushing attempts — significantly more than Barkley’s 55.6%.
• Once again, Simpson and Barkley are lumped together on rushing yardage while the rest of the group sits between 73.5% and 83.3%. Barkley’s 65.8% and Simpson’s 64.9% are slightly different as Barkley ceded rushing work primarily to his quarterback, while the run-heavy Bills gave 216 carries to RBs and fullbacks other than Simpson.
• No 2,000-yard rusher had his carries represent a smaller percentage of his team’s total plays than Barkley (31%). Sanders was next closest (32.6%), but most of the group was in the 36%-40% range.
• Barkley was also tied for last in terms of his rushing yardage as a percentage of his team’s total yardage with Henry (32.%). Simpson was far better than any other back by this metric (49%), largely because his YPC (6.0) was far better than the Bills' total average yards per play (4.8)

The biggest question regarding running back performance is how much of a player’s success is explained by their abilities and how much can be attributed to the infrastructure around them.

This is a fascinating question with Barkley because his talent is beyond reproach. Back in 2018, he was the highest-drafted running back in over a decade (2nd overall), and in the five drafts before and after, the average spot the first RB was taken was 23rd overall. 

Before joining the Eagles, he made the Pro Bowl twice and put up 7,311 yards from scrimmage — despite playing for a New York Giants team that ranked 30th or lower in point scoring in three of his six years with the team, never exceeding 15th.

Before entering the NFL, Barkley was identified as a player with special abilities. Prior to his breakout in 2024, he produced at an impressive rate on unimpressive offenses.

Even from a subjective standpoint, some of his plays this season demonstrate he can do things others cannot — most notably his backward hurdle against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Despite all of that, there is no disputing that Barkley has benefited enormously from his circumstances. Not only did the Eagles finish 2024 with the top-ranked offensive line, according to PFF, but their recent history of cultivating an excellent environment for RB success is tough to dispute.

In both 2022 and 2023, Philadelphia’s leading rusher left for a different team, and in both cases, they didn’t have nearly as much success elsewhere.

Another metric that shows how well Philadelphia blocks is his yards-before-contact (YBC). In some cases, contact can be avoided by speed or elusiveness alone, but this number is a good measure of the quality of blocking a running back gets. 

If they cannot get far before making contact with a defender, that’s a good indication that blocking has failed somewhere.

In 2024, the NFL average for YBC per carry was 2.5, and Barkley’s average was 3.8. To give that number some perspective, no other RB had a YBC/carry rate above 3.3 in 2024, and Barkley’s average in six years with the Giants was 2.1. He finished the 2024 season with 316 more YBC than any other rusher.

Metrics like YBC are relatively new, as are PFF offensive line rankings. However, some numbers from more recent 2000-yard rushers indicate they didn’t reach that milestone with working conditions as “cushy” as Barkley’s. In 2020, Henry joined the 2000-yard fraternity despite a YBC per carry of 2.5, which was the NFL average.

We also have PFF offensive line rankings for three 2,000-yard RBs other than Barkley, and none of them are at the top of the leaderboard.

This doesn't mean that Barkley deserves no credit. If running behind Philadelphia’s line was a guaranteed route to 2,000 yards, Miles Sanders or DeAndre Swift should've managed the feat in their RB seasons with the Eagles.

That said, it is meaningful context that Barkley’s road to this milestone wasn’t as hard as the one other running backs dealt with. 

There’s a reason that respondents to a recent RG poll were more inclined to attribute Barkley’s 2024 success to his offensive line than his talents — indisputable as they may be.

• Barkley is part of a trend towards less intensive use for leading running backs: The vast majority of 2,000-yard rushers took more than 70% of their team's rushing attempts, while Barkley was well below that threshold at 55.6%. His quarterback’s rushing plays a role in that, but teams aren’t feeding one RB as much as they used to. Over the last 10 seasons, the NFL carries leader has averaged 326.1 attempts. In the 10 seasons before that, the average for the league leader was 357.9 carries.
• While it’s difficult to compare offensive lines across eras, it’s clear Barkley is rushing behind a special one: Statistics like yards-before-contact and the offensive line grading done by Pro Football Focus suggest that Barkley has the advantage of far better blocking than most of his peers.
• Barkley’s efficiency is the calling card of his 2,000-yard season: Only Simpson, Peterson, and Sanders beat his YPC, and it was a significant 65.7% better than other Eagles running backs. That said, based on what we know about Philadelphia’s offensive line, it is bizarre that its trio of backup running backs — Kenneth Gainwell, Will Shipley, and Tyrion Davis-Price — combined for just 3.5 yards per carry.
• Our love of round numbers might be leading us astray: While 2,000 yards is a great accomplishment, it’s possible that Barkley might not have had the best rushing season in the NFL in 2024. Derrick Henry posted a higher YPC (5.9) than Barkley, and according to NFL Next-Gen Stats, he produced more yards than expected in total (562 to 549) and on a per-carry basis (1.77 to 1.62). Henry accomplished that while he faced eight or more defenders in the box 33.23% of the time, while Barkley only had to deal with a loaded box on 20.58% of his carries. Henry’s total of 1921 yards doesn’t capture the imagination, though.