Saquon Barkley 2025 Season in Review

Saquon Barkley finished 2025 as the number 14 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 15 running back in PPR per game. After his historic 2024 detonation, this was a year that lived a tier below the headline — still a true workhorse, still the centerpiece of the Eagles' run game, but grinding out yardage instead of ripping off the highlight-reel home runs that defined his first year in Philadelphia. He played all 16 games, carried 280 times, and finished with 1,140 rushing yards and seven scores on the ground — solid counting stats that masked how much harder the work was snap to snap. The receiving role stayed modest, and the boom weeks managers banked on a year ago became the exception, not the rule.

Now let's dig into the numbers. Barkley averaged 14.5 PPR points per game, but the shape was choppier than that average suggests — a true boom-or-bust line dressed up as a workhorse. He cleared 17 points seven times, but also dipped to single digits in five different weeks, including a 5.2 against the Vikings, a 5.6 against the Bears, and a 6.8 late against Buffalo. The efficiency tells the same story: 4.1 yards per carry, and his rushing yards over expected came in at plus 75.9 total, plus 0.3 per attempt — 31st among qualified runners. Translation: he was barely beating what an average back would have produced behind this blocking, despite a heavy workload. The receiving game cratered too — just 37 catches on 50 targets for 273 yards on a 12 percent target share, well off last year's pace. And the touchdown equity that usually props up a high-volume back was capped, because Jalen Hurts vultured eight rushing scores of his own at the goal line.

The one game that captured the season's identity was Week 14 in Los Angeles. Fourth quarter, third and one at midfield, Eagles down 9 to 13 — Barkley took a handoff to the left edge and ran 52 yards for the touchdown. That was his ceiling in a bottle: when the blocking finally opened a crease, he could still take it the distance, and that single play powered an 18.2 PPR game. But it was the exception. Too many weeks, the crease never came — and a back averaging four yards a carry behind a middling run-blocking unit becomes a volume bet, not a points machine.