The Linc - NFL insider poll ranks Saquon Barkley as the league’s best running back

The Linc - NFL insider poll ranks Saquon Barkley as the league’s best running back
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Philadelphia Eagles news and links for 7/7/25.

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Execs, coaches, scouts rank NFL’s top 10 running backs for 2025 - ESPN
1. Saquon Barkley, Philadelphia Eagles. Highest ranking: 1 | Lowest ranking: 2. Age: 28 | Last year’s ranking: 4. Barkley got greedy in 2024. He clearly wanted every first-place vote in our 2025 poll. And he got all but one of them. Barkley’s Super Bowl-inspired run in 2024 harkens back to then-New York Giants GM Dave Gettleman taking serious heat for selecting a running back with the second overall pick despite plenty of good quarterbacks available in the 2018 draft. Barkley was just that good. And just maybe, that pick wasn’t so bad and Gettleman looks smart? Let’s just say scouts around the league who once forecast Barkley as a transcendent player can admire those old scouting reports with a low-key fist pump. “It was almost like this was expected — he was always expected to be this,” an NFL personnel director said. “You can call it confirmation bias. Everybody thought he was a great player [at Penn State] and he proved what people thought he would be. It just took some peaks and valleys. And he was in a bad offense [in New York].” When including the regular season and playoffs, Barkley’s 2,504 rush yards and seven scrimmage touchdowns of 60-plus yards are the most in a season in NFL history. His speed was constantly on display, reaching at least 20 mph on nine touchdown runs, per Next Gen Stats. No other player had more than two. “He can go another few years with high-level play behind that [offensive] line,” the director said.

Eagles schedule preview: Buffalo Bills - BGN
This season should be Super Bowl or bust for Sean McDermott. He is the fourth longest tenured head coach and the three who were hired before him, Andy Reid, John Harbaugh, and Mike Tomlin have all won the Super Bowl. Putting this game in Week 17 was a really poor choice by the NFL schedulers. The Bills have wrapped up the AFC East before Week 17 three times in the past five seasons; they should do it again this year. The NFC East has been far more competitive, and the Eagles face a potentially brutal schedule, but it shouldn’t be a shock if both these teams are pretty much locked in on their playoff seeding at kickoff. This game could have had a lot more juice earlier in the season, even by just a few weeks.

Eagles Anti-All Quarter Century team - PhillyVoice
WR: Jalen Reagor, Miles Austin, Riley Cooper. I remember during the 2020 NFL Draft, Justin Jefferson somehow fell into the Eagles’ laps at pick 21. While the Eagles were on the clock, I can remember furiously typing up the pick, as if it was going to be Jefferson, as he was pretty clearly the best player available, and at an obvious position of need for the Eagles. Instead...