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Saquon Barkley has taken the NFL by storm with his uncanny ability to make plays on the ground. Barkley recently won the 2025 NFL Offensive Player of the Year for his stellar first season with the Eagles that powered them to an NFC Championship and a rematch with the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. But without the sharp eye and unwavering belief of Charles Huff, Penn State’s running back and special teams coordinator at the time, Barkley’s story might be significantly different.
Huff, an alumnus of Virginia-based HBCU Hampton University, was instrumental in flipping Barkley from his initial commitment to Rutgers. At the time, Barkley wasn’t even the top-ranked running back in his home state. That status belonged to Andre Robinson of Bishop McDevitt High School. Barkley, by all accounts, was often ranked second or third in recruiting circles. For many, the choice in a running back from Pennsylvania seemed obvious.
“He wasn’t even the No. 1 RB in the state of Pennsylvania when we got there,” Huff told The Athletic in a retrospective about Barkley in anticipation of the Super Bowl. “Andre Robinson, at Bishop McDevitt High School (in Harrisburg), was. Saquon was like the No. 2 or 3 guy. No one on the staff looked at his high school film and thought this guy was gonna be a generational talent. It was, ‘This guy will be pretty good. Let’s take him, but we’ve gotta have Andre.’”
To add to the story, Barkley was set on attending Rutgers.
“I wanted to play for Rutgers growing up. That’s the school I wanted to play at,” Barkley said to NJ Advance Media in a 2016 interview. “But I felt like Penn State provided more opportunity for me for the rest of my life. Sometimes you have to grow up and make decisions that are going to impact your life.”
While at Penn State Huff, now the head coach at Southern Miss, saw something in Barkley that wasn’t fully captured on tape. More than just his raw speed or explosiveness, Huff identified something intangible during those early conversations. Barkley had a different mindset—one that would eventually lay the foundation for his meteoric rise.
“We always talked about that Mamba mentality,” Barkley told The Athletic about his conversations with Huff. “Huff helped install that mentality and that confidence in me. He definitely made me work for it, but he knew my goal and the goals that we created for each other, and he held me accountable. He pushed me every single day to be the best person and player that I can be, and I’m forever thankful for him.
Huff’s journey to becoming one of the nation’s top recruiters and an FBS coach was anything but traditional, with roots firmly planted at his HBCU. A former walk-on at Hampton University, Huff transformed himself into a team leader through sheer grit. Starting his college career as a fullback, he played multiple...
