a post on its website that it also shared to social media.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cHe was 90 and had a fabulous life,\u201d his daughter, Billi Barnes Akins, told the team. <\/p>\n
Barnes was a native of Landis, and he went on to play college football and baseball at Wake Forest. <\/p>\n
Barnes was excellent in both sports \u2014 he hit .319 to help the Demon Deacons win the 1955 baseball national title \u2014 but he was the ACC Player of the Year in football in 1956 and that was his big ticket. The Eagles took him in the second round, 19th-overall, of the 1957 NFL Draft. <\/p>\n
Barnes was with Philadelphia for five seasons. He was a Pro Bowl pick in three of those seasons and help the team with the 1960 NFL Championship. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that he loved about the Eagles is in that championship game, they were the underdogs,\u201d his daughter told the team. \u201cDad always liked being the underdog. He said it made him tougher, made him stronger, made him play harder.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said the only thing that allowed them to win was their team,\u201d she added. \u201cThey were a team that was really tight and believed in each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barnes was with the Eagles through the 1961 season and then went on to play for Washington from 1962 through 1963. He suffered an injury prior to the 1963 season and was cut by Washington.<\/p>\n
Barnes returned to the Eagles and the NFL in 1965 but was traded to the Minnesota Vikings before the season began. He wrapped up his career with the Vikings following the 1966 season. <\/p>\n
He finished with 3,421 rushing yards to go with 153 catches and 1,786 receiving yards across his career. He scored 38 touchdowns. <\/p>\n
Barnes moved into coaching as the head coach of the Continental Football League\u2019s Charleston Rockets in 1967, and he also worked as an assistant with the New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons in the years that followed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Eagles legend Billy Ray Barnes died on Wednesday in Landis, North Carolina. The team announced his passing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[75435,25,7,6,31185,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-652979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-a1c00808","9":"tag-eagles","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-nflraw25","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","15":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115836314630768787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}