When a team wins a Super Bowl, that’s special. That’s immortality. You are immediately among the best NFL teams ever assembled.
Fans and pundits like to make lists of the GOATs of this, best of that, but one member of the reigning Super Bowl champion Eagles believes the 2024 Birds are special.
Running back Saquon Barkley was a guest on the Exciting Mics podcast with teammates Cooper DeJean and Reed Blankenship, and a few months removed from winning it all, he made a lofty observation about what his team had just accomplished.
“I firmly believe when you look at our team,” Barkley said, “and we’re not looking too far into the past… I think we’re a top-five team of all-time.
“If you really look at the season after the first four games, it was belt to a–.
“When you have the talent and the skill that we have on our team, mixed with the coaches… we all play together, how we played, teams really stood no chance. You see that in the playoffs. You see that in the Super Bowl. The [final] score was 40-twenty-something, but in reality, it wasn’t really a game.”
What Barkley said was boastful, but he isn’t that far off, when you consider the facts. After the team’s Week 5 bye, it played 17 games. It went 16-1 in those games. To say the defense was dominant in that span may actually be an understatement.
From Week 6 through the end of the regular season, the Eagles allowed a league-low 15.9 points per game. They allowed 251.5 yards a game, also best in the NFL — by 50 yards a game. They outscored their opponents, on average, by 13 points a game, including their three-point loss to the Commanders in Week 11. That loss was the only game after the bye in which they allowed more than 23 points, including all four playoff games.
And Barkley himself? He rushed for 1,570 yards — after the bye. That’s more than 22 entire NFL teams over those 13 weeks.
And if you’re talking about the Super Bowl? We could roll out statistics and facts galore, but just one paints a perfect portrait of the drubbing the Eagles handed one of the best quarterback-head coach duos in league history: With 2:33 left in the third quarter, and trailing 34-0, Kansas City crossed midfield for the first time.
Perhaps time and perspective will hash out where the 2024 Eagles rank among the best of the best teams and seasons. But Barkley’s evaluation is not without merit.
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