As training camp opens this week, there is no player on the Eagles under the microscope more than Jalen Hurts.
The entire fanbase is intently studying Sean Mannion’s new offense and how their Super Bowl winning quarterback will evolve in it. Through Wednesday and Thursday’s first two practices, it appears the offense will look very different from the ones Hurts has played in through his first five seasons.
While it remains to be seen how Hurts will fare in the passing game and what it will mean for him as a runner, it seems clear the new offense should be a boon for the running game and, in particular, Saquon Barkley and Tank Bigsby.
By the end of last season, the Eagles’ offensive line was an injury-plagued and ineffective group playing in an offense that was too predictable and asked for the linemen to do too much. It resulted in a massive drop in production from the run game and Barkley in particular.
The Birds had the second-most rushing yards in 2024 (3,048) and averaged 4.9 yards per carry. Last year, they were 18th in rushing yards (1.988) and averaged just 4.2 yards per carry. While Barkley did total 1,140 yards on the ground, it obviously paled in comparison to his legendary 2,005 yard season the year before.
It’s actually kind of a miracle he was able to pile up as many yards as he did.
Barkley’s backfield mate, Tank Bigsby, was acquired at the start of last season and didn’t begin to play regularly until Week 8 against the Giants, when he burst onto the scene with a nine-carry, 104-yard performance. He only had 356 yards rushing but did so on just 63 carries, averaging 5.7 yards per attempt.
The early reports on the running backs, Bigsby in particular, are encouraging.
We all know what Barkley can do, and much of last year’s struggles were due to an offensive line that saw an injured Cam Jurgens getting beat up and manhandled on a weekly basis as he fought through a lot of pain. Same for guard Landon Dickerson, who was nowhere near the same player he had been throughout his career. And Lane Johnson missed the team’s final eight games with a foot injury that was originally only supposed to keep him out 2-3 weeks.
The line just never got healthy or productive.
So it’s exciting to hear that Johnson and Jordan Mailata are so excited about what they saw during the spring practices.
Former offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo’s vanilla and obvious gameplans allowed defenses to key in on Barkley, too. It was a recipe for disaster. Imagine having a playbook in which plays are designed to make it unclear to the defense whether the upcoming play was going to be a run or a pass, a playbook where both aspects of the offense worked off one another.
Seems impossible, but it can happen!
Things should be different in 2026. And that would be the very best thing to take the pressure off Hurts and the revamped passing attack.
There is enough talent on this offense that it is conceivable Barkley and Bigsby could each go over 1,000 yards. In fact, let me go ahead and make that prediction.
Saquon Barkley and Tank Bigsby will both clear 1,000 yards rushing this season.
If that happens, and if Mannion’s offense resembles anything like what we’ve seen from San Francisco, Los Angeles or Green Bay, the ground game will once again return to being one of the best in the league.
Welcome news for Jalen Hurts, to be sure.
