Philadelphia Eagles need to prevent Saquon Barkley from matching Week 6 performance

The defense of the Philadelphia Eagles will certainly have their hands full against the New York Giants when it comes to trying to stop Saquon Barkley.

To say Sunday’s game against the New York Giants was a must win for the Philadelphia Eagles would be a huge understatement when seeing the importance of staying in the hunt for the NFC East.

On paper, the Eagles may seem like the better team, but between all of the injuries to their defense along with the Giants have plenty of weapons to work with in Odell Beckham Jr. and Saquon Barkley, Sunday’s game will be far from an easy win.

Speaking of Barkley, Philadelphia remembers well how difficult it was to keep the rookie running back in check during their Week 6 win over their rivals.

Despite the Eagles hanging on to defeat the Giants 34-13 during that Thursday meeting, Barkley turned out to be quite the handful for the defense, as the former Penn State star ended up leading the Giants in both rushing and receiving.

Not only did Barkley rush for 130 yards with a touchdown on just 13 carries during that game, but he also managed to haul in nine catches for 99 yards as well, giving him an impressive total of 229 scrimmage yards in the contest.

Unfortunately, the chances of Barkley matching or putting up better numbers seems highly likely when looking at how banged up Philadelphia’s defense has been in recent weeks, especially at the cornerback position.

No matter how hard the Eagles try, finding a way to keep Barkley in check may end up being too difficult if the last two weeks against the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints are any indication of what to expect.

Of course, this isn’t going to prevent Philadelphia from doing everything in their power to do whatever it takes to keep the football out of Barkley’s hands whenever possible, even if the rookie isn’t going to make it easy for them.

Also, a defense like the Eagles can only perform so well on their own without the necessary support from the other side of the football on offense, so it will be interesting to see how the unit performs as well.

Clearly, Barkley is quite a special player, and just the thought of him being part of the NFC East for years to come should make Philadelphia fans nervous since he seems like the kind of player who will only get better with experience.

But for now, instead of looking that far ahead to the future, the main focus for the Eagles is preventing Barkley from having another strong outing to put themselves in better position to win along with keeping the race close in the NFC East.