PHILADELPHIA — It was the play of the game, and hardly surprising, since Saquon Barkley was making it happen and against those familiar victims, the Los Angeles Rams. It had been Week 12 when Barkley, evolving from Eagles’ heralded free agency signing to potential lead MVP candidate, tore through the Rams for 255 yards and two touchdowns in a Birds road victory. It was Barkley’s best performance of the season, and in retrospect it was essentially the Rams’ wakeup call, since they turned around and won their next five games in a row to clinch a playoff spot, took a Week 18 breather, then knocked off Minnesota in a wild card round game to draw the NFC East champion Eagles. And again that Barkley guy made them pay for it. Instead of a pre-Thanksgiving Monday night in LA, this was the snowiest Sunday night in a long time in Philadelphia, and Barkley chose it for his second-best rushing show of the season, breaking off two long touchdown runs en route to 205 yards as the Birds rode him to a 28-22 victory that earns an invite to the NFC Championship game. “Whether it’s in the national spotlight or a Saturday in a parking lot, it doesn’t really matter,” Barkley said. “I just want to make plays for the team. I just kind of tell myself to lock in and be focused.” He first zeroed in with 1:07 left in the first quarter, hitting a hole and zooming out for a 62-yard touchdown run that put the Eagles up 13-7. But that bit of timely glory paled to the clutch, 78-yard touchdown with 4:48 remaining to play that will live as a highlight into the foreseeable future. Barkley took a handoff, seemed to take a lateral skip to the left, then shot around the Rams defense, blowing snow off his shoes en route to a picture-perfect scoring dash for a 28-15 lead. Well, maybe not completely perfect. “I was (lined up) on the wrong side. You don’t have that part of the story,” Barkley confessed. “But it worked out.” It certainly worked perfectly for the cameras, as Barkley, his excitement at peak pitch, started cheering himself on as he loped toward the end zone. Then when he crossed to a thunderous roar, he cut right and went faster, finishing with a knee-first slide toward his adoring fans. A short time later, he was shown a quick pic of that run. “It was a picture of me screaming like a little kid,” Barkley said. “I might have to get rid of that picture, get it taken down. But it was fun.” For him, it seemed like destiny, as it was the key play in a record-breaking day. The previous franchise record for most rushing yards in a playoff game was 196 by Steve Van Buren in an NFL Championship game in December 1949. “It’s special, especially because this week I looked it up,” said Barkley, ever the history student. “I was wondering … I was wondering what was the record. It’s weird how things work like that.” What’s more, Van Buren’s record was established against the Los Angeles Rams in a driving rainstorm. “Oh, I didn’t know that,” Barkley said. But it did seem that his second score would go down as an appropriate ending, except for a few nagging facts. “There’s 4:36 left,” Barkley said, “and they’ve got Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp and then Cooper’s over there and … you can’t really be too excited with anything that happens then,” Barkley said. “I think that was a prime example of that. “I was trying to stay locked in, stay focused. But I think I’m a little adrenaline junkie. When I make big plays I’ve got to chill out a little bit. So I’m doing my box breathing. I’ve got to do a better job of my box breathing.” It was Barkley and a packed and celebrating Eagles house that would soon find themselves suddenly doing deep breathing exercises. Jake Elliott, who nailed three field goals in the second half to keep the Eagles afloat, immediately missed his second point-after attempt of the game to keep the score at 28-15. That done, Stafford (26 of 44, 324 yards, 2 TDs) answered that second Barkley score with a textbook drive, firing the Rams onto a 10-play, 70-yard drive that ended with a 4-yard scoring pass to tight end Colby Parkinson to bring the Rams to within six points. And after an Eagles 3-and-out, he’d have a chance to drive the Rams down again with the game in the balance. Stafford looked bent on doing just that, at one point driving the Rams to the Birds’ 13-yard line. But an Eagles defense that was essentially solid all day recovered quickly, and Jalen Carter — who had another monster game — sacked Stafford on the next play for a 9-yard loss to bring it to a fourth-and-11 at the Birds’ 22. On that next, and last, Stafford stab, he delivered it in a rush because Carter was again closing in. The ball went beautifully awry. “Jalen is a special player,” Barkley said. “I talked to him on the sidelines before that (last series) and he looked me in the eyes, let me know he was going to make a play.” Or two. “It takes every single one of us,” Barkley added. “If we’re going to accomplish what we want to accomplish it’s going to be a team effort and we did that today.”