The Saquon Effect

Saquon Barkley’s bye week began with the best golf of his life and ended with him nursing a root canal.

The running back’s habits on the annual week away have matured along with him over the last seven years. The first few bye weeks of his career, he’d typically take the opportunity to travel. Late last month, he used the Eagles’ idle time to stay put, get some dental work done, and shoot a personal-best 82 after taming his driver with some new-and-improved wrist positions at the top of his swing.

“I followed that up with a 91,” Barkley told The Inquirer. “So I got humbled real quick.”

Speaking at a fundraising event for St. Luke’s Hospital Network a few days after Eagles players dispersed for the bye week, Barkley conceded that his upcoming Sunday probably would include some Giants football. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. He’d watched — and posted on social media about — his former team’s Thursday night game a week earlier, knowing some fans may harbor the type of hard feelings that he’d quickly set aside himself.

“If the Giants are on, I’ll watch the Giants,” Barkley said. “I have teammates and guys there, I watch them. I root for them, but I’m not saying I want them to win.”

“If my old teammates do well and the Giants lose, that’s a great Sunday for me,” Barkley said, jokingly. “But, honestly, I’ve got no hate.”

With the Eagles’ first matchup against the Giants since signing Barkley away from a division rival looming this Sunday, the star will soon experience MetLife Stadium from the other side of the rivalry for the first time in his career. The last few months gave him a preview for the vitriol he might receive from his old team’s fan base. Former Giants running back Tiki Barber posted that Barkley was “dead to us” shortly after he signed his three-year deal worth up to $37.75 million with the Eagles. The scrutiny lingered on, as HBO’s Hard Knocks series televised the key moments of Barkley’s stalemated negotiations from the Giants’ perspective.

Especially because his social media feeds were slow to adjust to his change of scenery, he’s just now seeing fewer posts from Giants fans, angry or otherwise, in place of Eagles content.

“My algorithm on Twitter is now getting caught up with the Eagles stuff,” Barkley said. “I’m getting a little more Eagles stuff where before, when I was on Twitter, it was more Giants stuff. Now all my stuff is caught up.”

In the early moments of the Eagles’ first practice of the week on Wednesday, “Many Men (Wish Death)” by 50 Cent blared through the stacks of PA speakers adjacent to the field, echoing through the NovaCare Complex along with the area beyond the black fences that surround it.

It’s a familiar refrain for Barkley, who used the song about betrayal in an edited video he posted of him switching from a Giants jersey to an Eagles one in March.

Perhaps it was coincidental, but the song could be viewed as a fitting tone-setter for Barkley in his first game as the foil to Giants fans rather than the team’s main protagonist.

This rivalry is so much bigger than what happened in the offseason or between me and the Giants or ‘Hard Knocks.’ This thing has been going for a very long time. I’ve been on the other side, I know how Giants fans feel. I don’t know what the environment is going to be like, but I’m excited.

“This rivalry is so much bigger than what happened in the offseason or between me and the Giants or Hard Knocks,” Barkley said Wednesday. “This thing has been going for a very long time. I’ve been on the other side, I know how Giants fans feel. I don’t know what the environment is going to be like, but I’m excited. As a player, as a competitor, you kind of welcome those environments and those moments.”

Barkley’s right. The Eagles and the Giants have a storied history. But he is central to the latest chapter.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Saquon Barkley still has friends on the Giants, but ‘Sunday is war’ when he returns to MetLife Stadium

Even if the song choice was coincidental, it hasn’t taken long for Barkley to become a tone-setter within the Eagles’ locker room. Joining a team with an established nucleus of leaders, Barkley said he has had to figure out how he would fit in. He had conversations with his trainer and mentor Ryan Flaherty about the subject.

“I’m in Year 7, I was a five-time captain in New York,” Barkley said. “Obviously I’m not a captain here, but whether I have a C on my chest or not, nothing really changes for me. That’s part of my game and part of who I am. … I’ve built up the pedigree to be able to go out there and speak my mind and let players know when it’s time.”

He leads not only by his play and the person he is, but by example. That is what you want out of any of your leaders.

Speaking about how Barkley responded after his quietest game of the season against the Browns, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni echoed a similar sentiment about the 27-year-old becoming one of the team’s unofficial captains in short order.

“He leads not only by his play and the person he is, but by example,” Sirianni said. “That is what you want out of any of your leaders. I know he doesn’t have a ‘C’ on his chest for captain, but I have no doubt he’s one of the main leaders on this football team.”

» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley tells The Inquirer how adversity-filled years with the Giants helped shape the new Eagles RB

Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson, one of the seven Eagles players who does have a “C” on his chest, said Barkley swiftly emerged as one of the team’s leaders partially through golfing with teammates in the offseason.

“It happened pretty quick,” Johnson said. “He’s a big golfer, so a lot of guys like to do that with him in their free time during the offseason. He’s very vocal, he’ll tell you what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling. He’s a great leader.”

Perhaps more tangible than his influence on the locker room is Barkley’s gravity on the field.

Through five games, the former Penn State standout is on pace to set career highs in yards per carry, rushing success rate, and explosive runs per game, operating out of an Eagles offense that presents more favorable looks for him to take advantage of.

Barkley also enters this weekend with a career high in average rushing yards before contact and light box percentage, a metric compiled by Next Gen Stats that tracks how often a running back faces six or fewer defenders inside the tackle box. His 3.9 average yards before contact rank fourth in the NFL and are nearly double his 2.2-yard average over his last three seasons with the Giants.

More simply put: Barkley has been afforded more space and opportunity near the line of scrimmage compared to his time with the Giants and has capitalized on what the Eagles offensive line has created for him.

Barkley’s jump in production helps explain why he isn’t going back to MetLife with something left to show the organization on the other side of a multiyear contract dispute that ended with broadcast conversations of Giants general manager Joe Schoen questioning his value to the team’s offense.

That value has been apparent for the Eagles.

“There’s lots of plays where maybe it’s not blocked right and he makes you right,” Johnson said. “He has the ability to do that, he has the ability to stretch out wide and catch the ball out of the backfield and stretch out as a receiver. He just has that dynamic ability to do that.”

Sirianni added, “I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve just really shook my head like, ‘Man, that was an unbelievable cut.’ And he’s making these cuts at 230 pounds. Oh, on top of that, he’s making these cuts at 4.3-[second 40-yard dash] speed. Who is like him, you know what I mean?”

His torrid start has also resulted in opposing defenses adjusting how they play against the Eagles. After facing stacked boxes (defensive formations with eight or more players between the tackles) on just 13.6% of his runs against the Atlanta Falcons and 11.8% of his rushes the following week against the New Orleans Saints, he has seen a significant increase the last couple weeks.

Partially due to both Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles and Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz authoring aggressive defensive systems, Barkley has seen loaded boxes on more than 40% of his runs the last two weeks and had his season low in rushing yards against the Browns.

Johnson said Wednesday that the Browns used their linebackers more creatively than most teams in an effort to throw off the Eagles offensive line’s blocking angles for Barkley’s runs.

“They try to do different stuff with their linebackers trying to throw off our combination blocks and maybe our angles,” Johnson said. “I feel like, once he has some success, they start doing a lot of messing around with the linebackers to try to mess up our angles.”

Still, the by-product of teams committing to stopping the Eagles’ running game with Barkley at the center has reverberated through the passing game. Against the Browns’ man coverage-heavy approach, the Eagles were able to take deep shots down the sideline in part because of the space opened up by Barkley’s gravity.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Saquon Barkley says he doesn’t have anything to prove vs. Giants and focuses on a rivalry win

And even if that space doesn’t present itself against his former team, Barkley insists he’s got nothing to prove to the Giants after the way things ended.

“I don’t have to prove anything to them,” Barkley said. “ … Whether I go for 300 yards or 10 yards, as long as we win, I don’t have that big of a pride or an ego that if I go out there and ball, I’m looking at those guys over there, like, ‘Look at what you guys let go.’”

The Eagles play in Week 7 against the New York Giants. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from MetLife Stadium.