Saquon Barkley Primed To Turn The Clock Back For Fantasy Football Success
Ian Hartitz breaks down the Philadelphia Eagles RB room, and whether Saquon Barkley can reach the top again in fantasy football.
Philadelphia loves a good underdog story. Hello, Rocky was born here. It also loves a good comeback story, as Saquon Barkley is looking to scale the heights he rose to in 2024 when he was the best RB in football. Can he do it. Ian Hartitz breaks it down as part of his Philadelphia Eagles Team Preview.
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Will 2026 be comeback szn for Saquon Barkley?
- RB1: Saquon Barkley (RB8 in Fantasy Life ranks)
- RB2: Tank Bigsby (RB57)
- RB3: Will Shipley
- RB4: Dameon Pierce
Hopefully! 2025's 2,283 total yards and 15 scores were good for RB1 status in fantasy land, but sadly, the encore (1,413 yards, 9 TD, RB15 in PPR points per game) wasn't exactly what loyal fantasy managers had in mind.
So what happened? Well, many have pointed to Barkley having a whopping 482 touches across the entire 2024 season as a reason for his decline. I wrote about the history of running backs coming off high-touch seasons and noted the following takeaways about 30 RBs after a year with 350+ touches (you can see a full chart here):
- Only 4 of 30 (13.3%) high-touch backs exceeded their previous season's average PPR points per game.
- Not ideal, although this still produced 16.6 PPR points per game (pretty solid average (RB14.7) and median (RB12) position ranks. For reference, last season Chase Brown averaged 16.6 PPR points per game and finished as the RB7.
- Average yards per carry went from 4.7 to 4.1 (-0.6).
- Average games played the next season AFTER having 350+ touches: 13.3. The median was 16 (including playoffs).
- It's tough to say age or career touch count is too much of an issue in terms of predicting near-term health, as 12 of the last 13 qualifiers (sorry CMC) played at least 13 games the next season.
That note on a decrease in yards per carry feels relevant here: Barkley went from averaging 5.8 yards per carry in 2024 to just 4.1 in 2025. At least some of that can be blamed on the offensive line—Eagles RBs averaged 1.45 (7th) yards *before* contact per carry in 2025 compared to 2.25 (1st) in 2024—but we simply didn't see the same explosive monster last season, even if Barkley's fastest ballcarrier speed in 2025 (21.87 MPH) was barely slower than his best mark from 2024 (21.93 MPH).
This is where things get tough: Do we expect Barkley to get back to partying like it's 2024 … because he's coming off 346 touches instead of 482? It's this sort of reasoning that has me generally fading the touch count factor as a key decision point with running backs—the bigger story here is that Barkley (again) profiles as someone ready to handle one of the position's largest workloads inside an offense that is usually quite good at putting up points. That's a tough proposition to worry too much about.
Also note: Here's a funny thing about Mr. Tank Bigsby: He's been one of the best tackle breakers that the position has to offer over the past two seasons.
Sure, a lot of those numbers are from 2024, but Bigsby's time in Philly sure seemed to also indicate the 24-year-old bulldozer is a problem with the football in his hands. Small-sample be damned: Bigsby averaged a whopping 5.9 yards per carry behind the same offensive line that held Saquon to 4.1–and he looked good doing it! Bigsby isn't going to overtake Barkley anytime soon; just realize the former Jaguar will be on the cover of every waiver wire article in the industry should an unfortunate injury force him into RB1 duties. There is HIGH-end handcuff upside here.
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