It's a Record. Right?

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On the face of it, the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, Nick Sirianni, has a tough decision to make. The outcome of the Eagles’ game this coming weekend cannot alter their immediate future: Win or lose, they’re locked into the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs. But Sirianni has a player going for a personal record, and it’s a huge one.

We think.

Kinda depends upon how specific you want to get.

Here is Sirianni’s dilemma, or perhaps more appropriately the situation that Philly’s entire organization needs to weigh in on: Running back Saquon Barkley, who has been so flat-out great this season that he’s in the MVP conversation despite not being a quarterback, needs 101 yards on the ground against the Giants on Sunday to break the NFL’s single-season rushing record.

That’s incredible, and it is certainly laudatory, and you can see why the coach and his staff and front office are trying to figure out what to do. It’d be more prudent to rest Barkley and some of the team’s other stars, since the game’s outcome doesn’t matter, but Sirianni also doesn’t want to deny Barkley a chance at history.

"I'll talk to our staff, I'll talk to the players, I'll talk to [general manager] Howie [Roseman], I'll talk to Mr. Lurie. I'll talk to everybody to try and make sure I'm making the best decision for the football team," Sirianni said Tuesday during his weekly interview with 94WIP radio in Philadelphia. "What's the best thing for the team? And then also, what's the best things for the individual going for the record?"

Okay — but is it really history? Or is this closer to creative accounting?

And where do we draw the line on this stuff, anyway?

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Here’s the thing: The record Barkley would be breaking belongs to Eric Dickerson, who rushed for 2,105 yards for the Rams in 1984.

Nineteen eighty-four! Saquon Barkley wouldn’t even be born for another nearly 13 years. In 1984, gas was $1.21 a gallon and “When Doves Cry” was the No. 1 Billboard song for the year and the top-rated TV show was Dynasty.

Also: In 1984, the NFL played 16 games per season.

You see the issue. Barkley and the Eagles are about to play their 17th game. It’s not their fault; they don’t run the league. Still, Barkley could well break Dickerson’s all-time mark only because he plays an extra game that Dickerson never got.

Will you recognize that? Is the number the number?

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We’ve been debating this sort of thing since at least Maris v. Ruth, and it never really gets resolved, but it is still fascinating to me. As sports fans, we’re powerfully drawn to numbers; we use statistics not just to keep score but to declare and opine upon greatness.

That’s part of the fun. But these numbers — they’re a moving target, right? And as leagues change and adapt and try to survive, adding games or expanding playoff brackets or switching up the rules, all sorts of numerical manipulation is constantly occurring.

In this case, the NFL added a 17th regular-season game. Records will thus be rewritten, new “leaders” identified. And sometimes that will just feel wrong.

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As I write this, Boise State running back and Heisman runner-up Ashton Jeanty needs a 132-yard rushing performance against Penn State in the college football playoffs on New Year’s Eve to break Barry Sanders’ all-time NCAA single-season mark, a record which has stood for more than 35 years.

But wait! Barry Sanders piled up his record 2,628 rushing yards in just 11 games. Ashton Jeanty will be competing in his 14th game when he faces Penn State’s rugged defense. If Jeanty somehow gains 132 yards or more, does Barry Sanders’ absurdly brilliant season from 1988 just fade away?

The short answer, of course, is yes.

Let me put it another way. You may recall watching Barry Bonds smash his way past Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record in 2007 and thinking to yourself, But wait: Bonds cheated his ass off. Still, when you go into the Baseball Reference website and look up career home runs, you’ll see Bonds on top. The number is the number.

Ashton Jeanty is having one fantastic season. Barry Sanders had a better one. But there’s only one leader, and that will be the number.

Saquon Barkley is on the verge of something really amazing, and he’s already having a great year. Eric Dickerson never got a 17th game, so we’ll never know.

But we do know this: When Dickerson set the current all-time single-season rushing record in the NFL, he surpassed O.J. Simpson, who had become the game’s first 2,000-yard rusher way back in 1973.

The league played 14 games back then, not 16 and not 17.

What can you say? Numbers dance like running backs.

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