Eagles running back Saquon Barkley will continue to chase history on Sunday when the Birds take on the Washington Commanders.

Barkley, who topped LeSean McCoy’s Eagles’ single-season rushing record earlier this month, could still pass Eric Dickerson’s long-standing NFL rushing record set in 1984. But he needs to pick up the pace after averaging just 65 yards rushing against the Pittsburgh Steelers last week, something Dickerson doesn’t necessarily approve of.

“I will tell you the truth. No, I don’t want my record to be broken. Of course not,” Dickerson said in a Dec. 6 interview on 94.1 WIP. “If he breaks it, he breaks it, and I won’t lose sleep over it.”

The good news is that the Commanders enter Sunday’s game with a 25th-ranked defense against the run. Barkley added 146 yards rushing and another 52 yards receiving in the Eagles’ win over the Commanders last month.

Here’s a look at Barkley’s stats and what he needs to do to surpass Dickerson’s rushing record with three weeks left in the season.

Heading into Sunday’s game against the Commanders, Barkley has 1,688 yards rushing this season, leading the NFL. He is averaging 120.6 rushing yards per game, a pace that would put him at around 2,050 rushing yards this season.

Barkley has already surpassed his career-high of 1,312, which he set with the New York Giants in 2022. He also has a career-best 11 rushing touchdowns, which came in his rookie year in 2018.

The record belongs to Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson, who ran for 2,105 yards for the Los Angeles Rams in 1984 in his second season in the NFL. Dickerson passed for more than 100 yards in 12 of his 16 games this season, including two games in which he passed for more than 200 yards.

Over his 11-year career, Dickerson managed 13,259 yards, the ninth-most in NFL history. Former Cowboys star Emmitt Smith holds the NFL’s all-time rushing record with 18,355 yards.

With three games remaining on the 17-game schedule, Barkley is 417 yards away from the record. He’ll need to average 139 yards per game over the final three weeks of the season to overtake Dickerson.

Luckily for him, the Birds’ remaining games are against teams with weak rushing defenses. The Commanders allow about 132 yards per game while the Dallas Cowboys give up about 136 yards per game on the ground.

The New York Giants, who the Eagles face in Week 18, have the second-worst rushing defense in the league, allowing their opponents to rush for over 143 yards per game. However, it remains to be seen whether the Eagles would even turn to Barkley if they had no chance of securing the NFC’s No. 1 seed and ended up treating the Giants’ game as a bye.

In addition to setting the NFL single-season rushing record, Barkley has a chance to set a new NFL single-season scrimmage yards record. But it seems like a long way off.

Barkley enters Week 16 with 1,964 scrimmage yards (rushing and passing). If he plays three more games in the regular season and continues at the same pace (approximately 140 yards per game), he will finish with 2,385 yards, which is below Chris Johnson’s record of 2,509 yards set in 2009 with the Tennessee Titans.

Things aren’t going Barkley’s way this week. He has only had four receptions for 19 yards total in the last three games, and it has been more than a month since he had more than 50 receiving yards in a single game.