Saquon Barkley ($8,600) is the best running back in football. Saquon Barkley is inevitable. Saquon Barkley is a fantasy football cheat code.
But is the Philadelphia Eagles star still good value when he costs $1,700 more than the second-priciest running back in a shallow pool of players where the average salary needs to be just $5,555?
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Frankly, that question is preposterous. Of course Barkley is still good value. He still averages 0.0029 fantasy points per dollar, far more than any of the other three starting running backs on Sunday’s Conference Championship slate. Besides Barkley, Buffalo’s James Cook ($6,900) and Washington’s Brian Robinson Jr. ($5,600) are the two priciest running backs on Sunday, but Cook will face the top-ranked Kansas City Chiefs and Robinson will face the second-ranked Philadelphia Eagles. A better value play is probably Kansas City’s Kareem Hunt ($5,400), who’s playing a Bills defense that has allowed the most fantasy points to running backs among the four remaining teams.
In his first season in Philadelphia, Barkley posted the eighth 2,000-yard regular season rushing performance in NFL history, coming within 100 yards of tying Eric Dickerson’s 40-year-old rushing record. He totaled a league-leading 378 touches and 2,283 scrimmage yards to go along with 15 total touchdowns. In terms of rushing effectiveness, it was close between him and the Baltimore Ravens’ Derrick Henry and a huge gap to anyone else.
But that was the regular season. For an inner-circle playoff contender like the Eagles, the season truly started with a Wild Card Round matchup against the Green Bay Packers on January 12.
Barkley has only gotten better, taking 51 carries for 325 yards and two scores across Philadelphia’s first two postseason games. A 25-carry, 119-yard performance against the Packers, who finished as the 20th-best run defense on DraftKings, was spectacular. The 26-carry, 205-yard, two-touchdown encore against the 13th-ranked Los Angeles Rams — in the snow, no less — was even better. The image of Barkley pounding his fist against his helmet as he raced towards the end zone for an effectively game-clinching score late in the fourth quarter will be seared into Eagles fans’ heads for years to come, especially if Philadelphia goes on to lift the Lombardi Trophy.
Meanwhile, although the Washington Commanders have been the surprise of the postseason and have pulled off two stunning upsets to reach the conference championship for the first time since 1992, their defense hasn’t been the major reason.
It was solid against Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Bucky Irving, who totaled only 77 yards on 17 carries during the Wild Card Round. However, the Commanders didn’t offer much resistance to Detroit Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs, who took his 14 carries for 105 yards and two scores during the Divisional Round. Combined with a 61-yard run by wide receiver Jameson Williams, the Lions had 201 rushing yards on 23 carries and three scores.
Washington is an excellent team that shouldn’t be slept on as the conference championship approaches, but a defense that allowed the fourth-most rushing yards and fifth-most touchdowns to opposing running backs during the regular season is never going to stop Barkley. In two games against the Commanders this season, Barkley totaled 55 carries, 296 yards, and four scores, as well as two catches and 52 yards through the air. He’ll get a huge workload on Sunday regardless, and it might be even bigger if quarterback Jalen Hurts, who suffered a knee injury in the Divisional Round, is at all limited.
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