The Los Angeles Rams (5-6) had an extremely difficult time stopping Philadelphia Eagles (9-2) running back Saquon Barkley on Sunday night at SoFi Stadium. Barkley posted a season-high and had already earned his career-best year through just 11 games.
Barkley earned 225 rushing yards with two touchdowns. Both scores went for 70 or more yards as he slipped past a few defenders and was off to the races, outrunning every Rams defender that tried to track him down.
Through just 11 games this season, Barkley's two scores on Sunday night tied his 2022 career-high season of 10 rushing touchdowns. His 225 ground yards earned him a season total of 1,392 rushing yards. That already passes his career-best total of 1,312 yards in 2022 with the New York Giants.
After the loss, rookie linebacker Jared Verse spoke to the media and gave his thoughts on what Barkley brought to the table in one of the more dominant single-game running back performances in recent history. Verse has not experienced many NFL running backs yet, but knows Barkley is for real.
"He's [Barkley] a different type of player, I've never seen a running back like that," Verse said. "Like I said beforehand, he can go downhill, he can bounce, and he did both of those on us. So we have to be better across the board."
Third-year safety Quentin Lake also gave his take on what Barkley did against him and the rest of the Rams defense. The entire defense did a ton of film study in preparation this week and very well knew what Barkley was going to come with. His skill and performance was too much for their prep.
"We knew what he was capable coming in and our plan was really to eliminate him or try our best to," Lake said. "Obviously, it showed what he could do as a running back. We'll take a look at the film, see [what] we need to improve on, but it's hard if you can't stop the run. The rest of the game, it's very difficult, but just eliminating the explosive plays, eliminate the explosive runs, and we'll be okay."
The Rams will face another running back of Barkley's caliber in Week 15 when they travel to play the San Francisco 49ers (5-6) and All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey. They must take what they learned tonight and implement those tools into their divisional game plan against McCaffrey.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/rams/ as Rams Stars React to Historic Saquon Barkley Performance.