PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Saquon Barkley normally would have tossed his game-used cleats to the kid who asked for the pair as the star Philadelphia Eagles running back ran off the field and back to the locker room.
Sorry, kid. Not today.
Barkley kept his mucked-up cleats for good reason — he became the ninth running back in NFL history to top 2,000 yards rushing in a season, reaching the milestone with a 23-yard run in the fourth quarter of Sunday's 41-7 win over the Dallas Cowboys.
That rush gave Barkley 2,005 yards with one game left and stuck him exactly 100 yards from Eric Dickerson's record of 2,105, set in 1984 for the Los Angeles Rams. Barkley left the game after the run that got him past 2,000, finishing with 167 yards on 31 carries.
“We definitely knew what the number was to at least get 2,000,” Barkley said. “We weren't leaving this field without at least accomplishing that. That's not the words from me, that's the words from the guys up front.”
Whether Dickerson likes it or not — and the Hall of Famer made clear last week he does not — Barkley is coming for the record next Sunday against the New York Giants.
Well, maybe.
The Eagles have clinched the NFC East and least the No. 2 seed in the conference, making that game mostly meaningless. Coach Nick Sirianni could opt to rest Barkley to protect him from injury ahead of the playoffs.
“Whatever his decision is, I'm all for it,” Barkley said. “If his mindset is, go out and try it, we'll go out and try it. If his mindset is, let's rest and get ready for this run, I'll all for it, too.”
Sirianni simply said, “we'll see.”
His backward hat askew, Barkley laughed when asked if he wanted to break the record in a delicious twist against his old team.
“I'm not overly trying to go get it,” Barkley said. “I'm not scared to. I would love to. But at the end of the day, we've got bigger things we're focusing on.”
Barkley gets a shot at the record thanks to a 17th game of the season that Dickerson and the NFL did not have in 1984.
Derrick Henry was the last running back to exceed 2,000 yards. He had 2,027 for the Tennessee Titans in 2020. Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson ran for 2,097 yards in 2012, the second most in an NFL season.
Barkley, who left the Giants to sign a three-year deal with the Eagles for $26 million guaranteed, also set the NFL mark Sunday for most yards rushing in a player's first season with a new team.
He ran for 176 yards and a touchdown in his first career game against the Giants.
“I didn't come here or sign here just to rush for 2,000 (yards) and break a record,” Barkley said. “I'm here to do something special.”
Barkley was drafted out of Penn State with the No. 2 overall pick in 2018. He was an instant success with New York and ran for 1,307 yards his rookie season. Barkley ran for 5,211 yards and 35 touchdowns and had 288 receptions for 2,100 yards and 12 TDs in six years with the Giants.
He hit free agency after the Giants elected not to put a franchise tag on him.
“I was in the dark,” Barkley said. “You don't know what's going to happen, you don't know where you're going to be. Everything is kind of up in the air.”
His mission is clear — win a Super Bowl and maybe take down Dickerson.
Sporting his trademark goggles and Jheri curl, Dickerson had seven straight 1,000-yard seasons in the 1980s, and the Hall of Famer is widely considered one of the best running backs ever.
Dickerson finished with 13,259 yards, the ninth most in NFL history. Emmitt Smith holds the career record with 18,355 yards.
“I don’t think he’ll break it. But if he breaks it, he breaks it,” Dickerson told the Los Angeles Times. “Do I want him to break it? Absolutely not. I don’t pull no punches on that. But I’m not whining about it. He had 17 games to do it? Hey, football is football.”
In 1984, Dickerson topped 100 yards rushing 12 times to break O.J. Simpson’s 1973 record of 2,003 yards rushing in a season.
Simpson set his record in 14 games for the Buffalo Bills before the NFL expanded to 16 in 1978. The NFL moved to 17 games in 2021.
“The way football is right now, it’s kind of hard to rush for 2,000 yards in 14 games,” Barkley said. "So, whether it’s 16, whether it’s 17, it’s a feat that you can never take away from what I was able to do with the O-line. And only eight other players did it, so it’s a special moment.”
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Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley (26) runs the ball against the Dallas Cowboys during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley (26) runs the ball against the Dallas Cowboys during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley (26) is congratulated by offensive tackle Jordan Mailata and teammates after running for a long gain to put him at over 2,000 yards for the season during the second half of an NFL football game against the Dallas Cowboys, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI says it recovered the black banner of the Islamic State group from the truck that an American man from Texas smashed into New Year's partygoers in New Orleans' French Quarter, killing 15 people.
The investigation is expected to look in part at any support or inspiration that driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar may have drawn from that violent Middle East-based group or from any of at least 19 affiliated groups around the world.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI had told him that “mere hours before the attack, (Jabbar) posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired” by IS.
Routed from its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq by a U.S. military-led coalition more than five years ago, IS has focused on seizing territory in the Middle East more than on staging massive al-Qaida-style attacks on the West.
But in its home territory, IS has welcomed any chance to behead Americans and other foreigners who come within its reach. The main group at peak strength claimed a handful of coordinated operations targeting the West, including a 2015 Paris plot that killed 130 people. It has had success, although abated in recent years, in inspiring people around the world who are drawn to its ideology to carry out ghastly attacks on innocent civilians.
Here's a look at IS, its current status, and some of the offshoot armed groups and so-called lone wolves that have killed under the group's flag.
The main group also goes by IS, ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
It began as a breakaway group from al-Qaida.
Under leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS had seized stunning amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria by 2014. Within territory under its control, it killed, raped and otherwise abused members of other faiths and targeted fellow Sunni Muslims who strayed from its harsh interpretation of Islam.
By 2019, a U.S.-led military intervention had driven IS from the cities and towns of its self-claimed state. Al-Baghdadi killed himself, and two children near him, that same year, detonating an explosive vest as U.S. forces closed in on him.
Currently, the main IS is a scattered and much weakened organization working to regain fighting strength and territory in Syria and Iraq. Experts warn that the group is reconstituting itself there.
And that flag? Typically, it's a black banner with white Arabic letters expressing a central tenet of the Islamic faith. Countless Muslims around the world see the coercive violence of the group as a perversion of their religion.
Some experts argue that IS is powerful today partly as a brand, inspiring both militant groups and individuals in attacks that the group itself may have no real role in.
The group's credo and military successes have led armed extremist organizations in Africa, Asia and Europe to swear allegiance to it. It's a greatly decentralized alliance.
Many of the offshoot groups have carried out lethal attacks. Islamic State-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based group, is one of the most lethal currently. Attacks linked to that affiliate include the March 2024 killings of about 130 people at a Moscow theater, the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans as the U.S. was withdrawing from Afghanistan, and killings in Pakistan and elsewhere.
The New Orleans rampage reflects the deadliest IS-inspired attack on U.S. soil in several years.
Other attacks over the past decade include a 2014 shooting rampage by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who fatally shot 49 people, pledged his allegiance on a 911 call to al-Baghdadi and raged against the “filthy ways of the West.”
Those attacks coincided with an influx of thousands of Westerners — some of them Americans — who traveled to Syria in hopes of joining the so-called caliphate.
In the aftermath of those killings, the threat from radicalized followers of the group had appeared to wane in the Defense Department strikes have taken out other IS members and the FBI has had significant success in disrupting plots before they come to fruition.
But over the past year, FBI officials have warned about a significantly elevated threat of international terrorism following Hamas’ rampage in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israeli strikes in Gaza.
The SITE intelligence group reported IS supporters celebrating in online chat groups Wednesday.
“If it’s a brother, he’s a legend. Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” it quoted one as saying.
President Joe Biden makes a statement on the latest developments in New Orleans from Camp David, Md., Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Emergency services attend the scene on Bourbon Street after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
This undated passport photo provided by the FBI on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, shows Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar. (FBI via AP)
A black flag with white lettering lies on the ground rolled up behind a pickup truck that a man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing and injuring a number of people, early Wednesday morning, Jan. 1, 2025. The FBI said they recovered an Islamic State group flag, which is black with white lettering, from the vehicle. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
