Saquon Barkley's third season with the Philadelphia Eagles will come under a third different offensive coordinator.
Speaking on Friday's episode of The Insiders on NFL Network, Barkley feels recharged by the hiring of the team's newest -- Sean Mannion.
“I’m super excited about it," Barkley said. "I’m going on Year 9, which is crazy to say, and I’ve had a lot of different coaches and head coaches and been a part of a lot of systems. I don’t think I really came across a system like this. For me, it’s refreshing. You get something new. You get to learn something new.
“I got to meet him. We didn’t really talk about X’s and O’s and kind of just kept it introduction and got to meet a lot of the new guys on offense. As a competitor, you love it. You love the challenge of putting yourself in a new system and doing the things that you do really well, and also things that you need to improve on and that they’re going to challenge us to do. I feel like if we are able to have that mindset as an offense and buy into that, I think the sky’s the limit.”
Unfortunately for the Eagles during their failed Super Bowl defense in 2025, the main challenge proved to be finding a modicum of offensive consistency.
Philly was out of whack for large stretches of the season and finished 19th in scoring and 24th in yards. Although the rushing attack was moderately more effective than the passing game (ranked 18th versus 23rd), Barkley experienced a massive drop off from his 2024 Offensive Player of the Year campaign in which he eclipsed 2,000 rushing yards and averaged 5.8 yards per carry.
Barkley managed 1,140 rushing yards on 4.1 yards per tote, with his 71.3 rushing yards per game dwarfed by the previous year's league-leading 125.3. He had three 100-yard rushing games compared to 11 in '24.
“At the end of the day, we just weren’t consistent enough throughout games," he said. "That’s something that we have to challenge ourselves to get ready for next year. We made a lot of changes on offense with the coaching staff, so excited to get in the building and learn something new and just go out on the field and put last year in the past. It’s really hard to go back-to-back. You think it’s easy and you have all the talent and you know what it takes to get there, so in you’re mind you’re like why not? But it doesn’t just work like that. Every team, every year is building up and getting ready to perform and compete for a Super Bowl, and we’ve got to do the same thing.”
The con of the most recent iteration of the Eagles proving unable to flip a switch as they had the year prior can become a pro moving forward: Each season starts anew, and Barkley is confident the next Philly flock can turn a corner.
In pursuit of such an aim, Philadelphia hired Mannion, a riser in the coaching ranks and previously the Green Bay Packers quarterbacks coach, as offensive coordinator. After parting ways with longtime offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland, the Eagles also hired Chris Kuper away from the Minnesota Vikings to be the club's new OL coach as part of a revamped coaching staff.
Both will be working closely with Barkley to produce a rebound.
As far as the star running back is concerned, they've already delivered a refresh.
“From everything that was told, very creative, super smart," Barkley said of the new coaches and expectant changes offensively. "All the guys that we hired are super smart and competitive. They want to be great and they’re excited with the talent that we have. I think we buy in to everything that’s new and continue to have our standard and all the things that we do at a high level, I feel like what we did last year is gonna be in the past. You’ve got to learn from it, and I think that we have the guys that are willing to learn from it. I don’t think -- I know we have the guys that are willing to learn from it.”