Saquon Barkley's Comments Will Have All Eagles Fans Ready for New Year

From top to bottom, it wasn't an ideal season for the Philadelphia Eagles a year ago. The Eagles, who were still among the five best teams in the NFL, didn't end up winning a Super Bowl, and with all the talent they have on both sides of the football, that's typically viewed as a disappointment. 

However, I think that even when we look at individual problems, we can see that Philadelphia didn't play the kind of football it hoped for. Whether that was certain guys just not doing the job or something else, there were issues that needed to be addressed. 

One of those was with Saquon Barkley, which almost sounds crazy to say. Barkley, however, arguably had his worst season as a professional, which is a tad concerning heading into next year. 

With how bad things went because of Kevin Patullo, I don't want to put too much pressure on Barkley just yet, but I'm also glad to hear the former Penn State star come out and say that he understands last season wasn't up to his standards and he needs to be better moving forward. In fact, getting to the Super Bowl is a big reason why Barkley is looking to do what he does best.

“So that’s a motivation for me – try to get back to that game,” Barkley told USA TODAY Sports in an exclusive interview on July 15. “That’s why I train the way I train. I would love to have had a faster start last year, but you can’t get caught up in the stats. You can’t get too caught up in numbers. Some of my better years weren’t based off numbers. It was based off how I handled myself in certain situations.”

“There is going to be one winner and thirty-one losers,” Barkley said, “and the losers are all the same.”

For the Eagles to be the team they're looking to be next season, a lot of it is going to fall on the shoulders of Barkley and some of the other stars on the offensive side of the football. 

Moving on from A.J. Brown only confuses things more, or at least puts more pressure on some of these guys, so that's a question Barkley will have to answer. I'm pretty confident in him doing just that, but we'll see eventually.