Eagles star Saquon Barkley makes bold NFL retirement admission

Saquon Barkley is coming off his best year as an NFL playerhaving won the Super Bowl and set individual records with the Philadelphia Eagles. His impact has been so significant that he was chosen to grace the cover of the NFL video game Madden 2026.

“It’ll be out of nowhere”

This week, Barkley opened up about the possibility of retiring from professional sports.

The running back appeared on the latest episode of the podcast “Green Light with Chris Long” and revealed that he doesn’t know when he’s going to hang up his cleats, but he is certain that he will make the decision suddenlymuch like Barry Sanders did.

“I’ll probably be one of those guys that it’ll be out of nowhere,” Barkley said. I’ll probably just wake up one day, whether it’s next year or two years or four years, and just be like, ‘Yeah, it’s over.”

He added: “One of my favorite players of all time, probably my favorite player of all time, is Barry Sanders, so probably similar to that. Maybe one day it’ll be out of nowhere. I’ll probably be ballin’ and just be like, ‘Yeah, call it quits.’”

Sanders retired from football in 1999 after 10 seasons in the NFL with the Detroit Lions, when he was only 31 years old. Barkley, who turned 28 on the day of Super Bowl LIX in February, has seven years of professional wear and tear in his legs and has accumulated 7,216 rushing yards.

What is Barkley’s contract situation?

Philadelphia’s window to win more championships would appear to remain open as long as they have the Penn State alum on their rosterwith Nick Sirianni as head coach and a defense led by coordinator Vic Fangio.

One thing that might reassure Eagles fans is that Barkley is under contract until the end of the 2028 seasonafter signing an extension in March of this year.

However, it’s also worth noting that his agreement includes a clause that allows him to terminate the contract early, after the 2026 NFL season.