How many yards does Saquon Barkley need to set a new NFL rushing record?

Saquon Barkley remains on pace to set a new NFL rushing record as the Eagles take on the Dallas Cowboys at the Linc Sunday.

Barkley, who topped LeSean McCoy’s Eagles single-season rushing record earlier this month, rushed for 150 yards against the Commanders during last week’s loss and is nearing Eric Dickerson’s long-standing NFL rushing record, set back in 1984.

“I don’t think he’ll break it,” Dickerson told the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview. “But if he breaks it, he breaks it. Do I want him to break it? Absolutely not.”

Here’s a look at Barkley’s stats and what he needs to do to top Dickerson’s rushing record with two games left in the season.

Barkley heads into Sunday’s game with 1,838 yards rushing this season, which leads the NFL. He’s averaging 122.5 rushing yards per game, a pace that would put him around 2,083 rushing yards for the season.

He ran for 66 yards against the Cowboys in the Birds’ lopsided victory in Dallas last month, where Philly benched their starters during the fourth quarter.

Barkley has already topped his career high of 1,312 rushing yards, which he posted in 2022 with the New York Giants. He’s also rushed for 13 touchdowns this year, a new career high, topping the 11 touchdowns he scored during his rookie season with the Giants in 2018.

The record belongs to Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson, who rushed 2,105 yards for the Los Angeles Rams in 1984 during his second season in the NFL. Dickerson rushed for more than 100 yards in 12 of his 16 games that season, including two games where he topped 200 yards.

Over the course of his 11-year career, Dickerson rushed for 13,259 yards, the ninth-most in NFL history. Former Cowboys great Emmitt Smith holds the all-time career NFL rushing record with 18,355 yards.

Barkley is just the fourth player in NFL history to rush for over 1,800 yards and over 13 touchdowns while averaging over 5.5 yards per game through 15 games. The three other players are all Hall of Famers — Dickerson, Walter Payton in 1977, and O.J. Simpson in 1975.

With two games left on the 17-game schedule, Barkley is 267 yards away from the record. He needs to average 134 yards per game through the final two weeks of the season in order to overtake Dickerson.

Luckily for him, the Birds’ remaining games are against teams with weak rushing defenses. The Cowboys are giving up about 136 yards per game on the ground, while the New York Giants, who the Eagles face in Week 18, have the second-worst rushing defense in the league, allowing opponents to rush for over 142 yards per game.

It remains to be seen if the Eagles would even turn to Barkley if they have no shot at landing the NFC’s No. 1 seed in Week 18 and end up treating the Giants’ game as a bye.

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In addition to the NFL’s single-season rushing record, Barkley had a chance to set a new NFL record for scrimmage yards in a season. But that seems almost out of reach following last week’s game, where he didn’t have a single reception.

Chris Johnson currently holds the NFL record with 2,509 scrimmage yards (rushing and passing), which he gained with the Tennessee Titans in 2009. Barkley enter’s Sunday’s game leading the NFL with 2,114 total yards, and would need to average about 198 total yards a game over the next two weeks to break Johnson’s record.

Things aren’t trending in Barkley’s direction. He’s had a total of just four receptions for 19 yards over the past four games, and it’s been more than a month since he’s topped 50 receiving yards in a single game.

While he may not set a new NFL record, Barkley needs just 33 scrimmage yards Sunday to top LeSean McCoy’s franchise record of 2,146 all-purpose yards set in 2013.