Philadelphia Eagles Front Office Explains Decision to Sign RB Saquon Barkley

Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman cite why they gave Saquon Barkley $26 million in guaranteed money at a position that recently had been undervalued across the league

Philadelphia Eagles v New York Giants / Cooper Neill/GettyImages

Baseball season is underway, so here goes: It’s still early but Nick Sirianni has yet to repeat his offensive philosophy the past two years, a mantra that reminds me of the timeless baseball nugget of Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.

The Philadelphia Eagles coach obviously didn’t use that axiom from 1948 when Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain led the Braves to the World Series. His version: The offense runs through 6, 11, and 88.

Those are the numbers of course of DeVonta Smith, A.J. Brown, and Dallas Goedert. The coach will need to add Saquon Barkley’s name to the mix.

It never included Miles Sanders two years ago or D’Andre Swift last year, though both ran for more than 1,000 yards.

The Eagles aren’t paying Barkley a guaranteed $26 million for the next three years to not use him. The running back committee Sirianni liked to use in his first three seasons has been blown up.

So, too, has the perception that the Eagles don’t spend money on running backs. Owner Jeffrey Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman have disputed that in the past and did so again in Orlando during the annual NFL Owners Meetings while giving their reasons for splurging on Barkley and the position.

Mar 14, 2024; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. / Kyle Ross-USA TODAY Sports

They rightly point to deals given in the past to LeSean McCoy and Brian Westbrook, though they came more than a decade ago.

“With Saquon, one of the things that we always talk about, whether it was LeSean McCoy or Brian Westbrook, is the value of a running back,” said Lurie. “It’s not even the word in the title ‘running back.’ You have to be a great passing attack running back.

“For us, it’s gotta be multi-functional. And he exhibited very special skill sets, both in the running and passing game, that we think certainly can be maximized by being on a team with better skill positions, quarterback, offensive line. So it was a strategy to go.”

Barkley was too good to pass up in Roseman’s view.

“I think, for us, it’s hard to find special players at any position,” Roseman told NBCSports Philadelphia’s Dave Zangaro in Orlando. “We think Saquon’s a special player and we think he’s a special person. And when you’re trying to find those guys, they’re hard to find, especially on the open market.

“Then you put into the dynamic about … has the pendulum swung so far at this position? The guy touches the ball 300 times a year, hopefully. There’s not a lot of other skill position players that are touching the ball that many times and have that effect.”

The GM was able to convince his boss, Lurie, to make the commitment.

Presumably, it wasn’t a difficult sell. Lurie put on his business hat and talked about the evaluation of a position that has been undervalued the past few years.

“We’re always looking for inefficiencies in the market,” said Lurie. “If we think the league is overvaluing a position or undervaluing a position, we will try our best – but not always capable – of taking advantage of those inefficiencies. That’s important that you try to maximize the salary cap and how you allocate resources within a defined space.

“…So if you think about it, what we pay Saquon Barkley, take another position of what that’s getting in the league, and you tell me, is it better to pay Saquon that kind of money? Or a player at a different position that’s getting the exact same amount of money? That’s a decision. Howie led the way there and felt that Saquon was the right way to spend that money.”

Sirianni said he and his offensive staff are still in the laboratory cooking up ways to use Barkley. The coach compared the RB’s addition to two years ago when Roseman engineered a draft night trade to land Brown from the Tennessee Titans, a move that pushed the Eagles offense into another stratosphere, a Super Bowl stratosphere that first season, and eventually led to the firing of the Titans’ GM Jon Robinson.

“A couple years ago when we added AJ, there was a lot of work as to, hey, what AJ do well?” said Sirianni. “Obviously, you do that going in but look at it even more after you get him. What does AJ do well? How can we use him? And it’s been a similar process here with Saquon.”

The lab will produce plenty of plays for Barkley, and Sirianni must find a way to add a fourth name to his offensive mantra.