PLAYING IT COOL

The guy whose motto is chill-chill doesn't get worked up about much, but Philadephia's SAQUON BARKLEY can get hot when discussing the importance of his position

- by GREG BISHOP

Saquon Barkley

SAQUON BARKLEY wants you to forget about this so-called running backs resurgence. Instead, he'd like to reframe the positional narrative entirely, adding overlooked significance, despite recent and pervasive acceptance of the exact opposite notion: that NFL executives had/have given up on ballcarriers as anything more than necessary but disposable parts—the football equivalent of takeout containers or medical gowns.

Barkley presents Barry Sanders, his favorite back, as a counter to that argument. The creativity! That flair! The turning, full 360-degree pivots, before running the wrong way, on purpose, all simply to create a window, just a sliver of open field, to dance through and dart past. This style wasn't coachable, and that's what still appeals to Barkley.

“Saquon tries to mimic [Sanders],” says Micah Parsons, the Cowboys’ All-Pro pass rusher and Barkley’s close friend. “How he carries it. Like him.”

In Sanders and Barkley, Parsons sees differing styles, the cannot-be-replicated kind, borne from genetics, training and mastery of a specific, not-endangered skill set.

On the second day of training camp, Barkley's eyebrows shoot up during an interview with SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. Those brows, they scream, Really? He points to one story from Sanders's football lore, when the high school coach who didn't love Sanders's style didn't fully embrace it. “Imagine that!” the Eagles’ running back says.

Watch Barkley against Jacksonville last season. That half spin—back pointed toward the defense, tackler closing in—and then... his leap, perhaps the one play that best defined a season in which a running back unleashed his specific brand of dominance to imprint a Super Bowl championship.