Saquon Barkley aims to cement his NFL legacy after signing his record extension with the Eagles

Addressing reporters Monday to discuss his two-year, $41.2 million contract extension with $36 million guaranteed that made him league’s highest-paid player at the position, Barkley already has turned his attention to building the best season of his career so far.

Saquon Barkley won the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles, set the NFL record for the most single-season rushing yards including the playoffs and raised the bar for running back contracts.

Now he’s focused on cementing his legacy and place in football history.

Addressing reporters Monday to discuss his two-year, $41.2 million contract extension with $36 million guaranteed that made him league’s highest-paid player at the position, Barkley already has turned his attention to building the best season of his career so far.

“I want to be, if not the greatest running back of all time, one of the greatest running backs of all time,” Barkley said. “I hope I’m able to do that in an Eagle uniform.”

Barkley celebrated his 28th birthday by helping Philadelphia beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 to win the second Super Bowl championship in franchise history.

“The parade was cool, winning a Super Bowl on your birthday was cool,” Barkley said. “It comes back to you that you’re a Super Bowl champion. But you kind of lose focus on that already because you start thinking about how you’re going to be able to do it again. That’s just the nature of the sport. You have your time to celebrate it, but you win and you move on.”

Barkley fell 101 yards short of breaking Eric Dickerson’s regular-season record because he was rested rather than playing in a meaningless Week 18 game against his former team, the New York Giants. He rushed for 2,504 yards from the start of the season through the Super Bowl to top Terrell Davis’ mark of 2,476.

While he is only doing light workouts now with a plan to ramp things up in April, Barkley said he already has spoken with running backs coach Jemal Singleton about improvements moving forward. He would like to be better at running while carrying the ball in his left hand, among other things.

“You’ve got a whole new year and everything that you did last year happened last year,” Barkley said. “You’ve got find new ways to create that again.”

After a recent trend of teams devaluing running backs, Barkley hopes his contract helps James Cook, Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs and others get paid their worth in the coming days, weeks, months and years. His goal is for his deal not to be the most lucrative at the position for too long.

“I hope they beat it,” Barkley said. “That’s what this sport is about and building the position up and all those young guys that’s underneath me right now when they get when it’s their time, hopefully they beat it and max it out even more and in five and 10 years, it’s the same thing for those running backs that are playing in high school and college right now. That’s the goal. It’s happening for every other position, and I think it should happen for our position, too.”

On Sunday, Allentown celebrated “Saquon Barkley Day” with a ceremony at the PPL Center, where the Lehigh Valley native was presented with a key to the city.

Barkley, who attended Whitehall High School, lived in Bethlehem, Allentown, and Coplay while growing up.

Keystone senior community editor Patrick Berkery contributed to this report.