Saquon Barkley saw a clip of Barry Sanders on NFL Films when he was a kid that left a lasting impression. It wasn't Sanders juking half the defense on one of his dynamic touchdown runs. Instead, the Hall of Fame running back who inspired a generation of running backs with his sensational, elusive, shifty style was walking up and down the sideline handing out refreshments to his teammates. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.

"They were talking about how great of a player he was but they had a clip of him holding Gatorade cups and he's walking down," Barkley said on the AP's "On Football" podcast. "He is going to his teammates and just the way that he carried himself. So I would say I have to give my flowers to him there."

Barkley joined Sanders as one of nine players to rush for 2,000 yards in a season in 2024 when he was the AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year and helped the Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl. Barkley demonstrated he's a team-first player by sitting out the final regular-season game when he needed 101 yards to break Eric Dickerson's record. Earlier in the season, he told coach Nick Sirianni to let other backs get some carries after he had already rushed for 176 yards against his former Giants teammates and needed 14 more in the fourth quarter to set a new career-high.

Barkley finished with an NFL-record 2,504 combined rushing yards in the regular season and playoffs. He credits his parents, Alibay Barkley and Tonya Johnson, for instilling in him an unselfish mindset.

"Just how my parents raised me," he said. "Everything, who I am a person, it stems from my family, my brothers and sisters, and the coaches that I had growing up. But I don't think you should get flowers for being a great teammate. I don't think anything that I've done or that I said is rare. At least it shouldn't be rare. It should be the norm, and it is the norm. I might have just got caught on camera, or I might've had an article written about me, but there's other stuff that I have done that's behind the scenes, and I have multiple teammates that have done great things for me, too. And it's a winning culture. You want to create that culture. If you want to win football games, you want to be competing for cha"

This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.