Saquon Barkley is coming to Taylor Swift’s defense.
The Philadelphia Eagles star ripped fans who hit Swift with a loud chorus of boos during Super Bowl LIX on Sunday night in New Orleans. The pop star — who was at the game to watch her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — seemed extremely confused when fans showered her with boos when she was first shown on screen at the Caesars Superdome.
“I don’t get it,” Barkley said in an interview with Howard Stern, via NBC. “I don’t get why she was getting hate there.”
Swift was in a suite with Ice Spice, Ashley Avignone, Donna and Ed Kelce, her brother Austin and singer Este Haim for the Chiefs’ blowout loss to the Eagles on Sunday. Swift has been a regular at Chiefs games since her relationship with Kelce started, which has led to a massive influx of new fans and attention to the league as a whole.
While it seems like Eagles fans didn’t mean anything too malicious by it — they were booing the Chiefs all night, and seemed to have the edge fan-wise inside the stadium — and others in the political world are reaching to attack her because of it, Barkley is backing Swift up.
Not only is she helping the NFL rapidly expand, he said, but Swift had a very simple reason for being there.
"She's there supporting her significant other and she's made the game bigger," Barkley said. "We're all about, in football, we're all about how can we expand the game and make it more internationally and we're traveling to Brazil and we're traveling to Mexico, and apparently we're traveling to Australia soon, so we're trying to expand the game and her being a part of it's only helping that, so I don't get the slack that she's getting."
Barkley ran for 57 yards on 25 carries in the Eagles’ 40-22 win on Sunday, and he had another 40 receiving yards on six catches. The Eagles’ win snapped hopes of a three-peat for the Chiefs and brought Philadelphia its second ever championship. It capped a historic season for Barkley, who broke rushing yards in both the regular season and the playoffs.
