Saquon Barkley won’t be chasing history in Week 18.

Barkley will not play in the Philadelphia Eagles’ regular-season finale Sunday against his former team, the New York Giants, head coach Nick Sirianni announced, foregoing an opportunity to break Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record.

“It’s a very special record that’s been standing for a very long time by a great player,” Sirianni said, via team transcript. “It’s a team record that everybody is involved in, so you weigh in all those things.

“But at the end of the day, you just try to do what’s best for the team. Again, when the bye was, how guys are feeling, the bumps and bruises we can take care of.
We’ve put ourselves in a position to be able to be in this situation. And our goals are to have success and to play good the next game we play. Not only New York, but whoever we play after that. We think this plays into that.

“It’s not easy. It wasn’t the easiest decision to go through, but we have great people in this building and had a lot of input from a lot of different people, players included.”

Barkley was happy to run down history, but ultimately understood his coach’s decision and supported it.

“[Sirianni] asked me if I wanted to play, if I wanted to go for it,” Barkley said Wednesday, via ESPN. “I said, ‘On Sunday, I probably didn’t care too much for it. When I slept on it, it was an opportunity to implant my name in football history and I may never get an opportunity like that again. So, I’m down. But at the end of the day, I don’t care for putting the team at risk.’

“He’s the head coach for a reason. He makes those decisions and whatever decision he wanted to make, I let him know if you let me play, I’m going to go out there and make sure I get it. And if I don’t, I am OK with that, too.”