Saquon's second act
Barkley tells The Inquirer how adversity-filled years with the Giants helped shape the new Eagles RB.
Saquon Barkley arrived at his old high school field in Lehigh County with a pair of slippers on his feet, golf clubs in his trunk, and the type of levity that comes only from deliverance.
The Eagles’ newly signed running back, hosting a youth camp at the Whitehall High School stadium in July, would quickly render his footwear inadequate, instead darting around in his socks before emptying his pockets and shedding his shirt to join the “skins” team of campers during a game of ultimate football.
The midafternoon tee time at a nearby course he planned with a few former coaches didn’t stand a chance. The camp ran long, and that was before Barkley fielded questions and signed autographs engulfed in a crowd of Whitehall students, who proved unafraid to ask the 27-year-old the type of question he has been getting for months now.
Were you upset with how things ended with the Giants?
Barkley has certainly had enough practice answering those curious about the ending of a turbulent few years of unsuccessful contract negotiations with the New York Giants. He has been one of the league’s most productive at his position since getting drafted No. 2 overall out of Penn State in 2018, but he has also become one of the players most affected by the league’s shift away from giving big deals to running backs, especially those who have taken on the workload that Barkley has.
His answer, given while seated on the turf of Zephyr Stadium, resembled the one he has given countless times: The NFL is a business and he’s grateful both for the Giants and to be with the Eagles.
There’s just been so much that’s been going on the last three or four years for me, negative and positive. I take all those things and make all the negatives into a positive, that’s a mindset I have. All of those moments and all of that adversity has helped shape me.
What he doesn’t say is what’s apparent to those around him, though. Something he’ll even acknowledge himself in the right context: Signing with the Eagles has brought on a sense of relief to end a chapter defined by adversity in New York, a chapter that is now fueling the second act of his career.
“From dealing with the ACL,” Barkley said. “Getting over that, getting mentally prepared for that and coming back and then stepping on someone’s foot and having a high ankle sprain, I had to reinvent myself. I had to go out there with a killer mindset and prove to everyone that I’m still that guy and I’m back. To go out there and do that, help lead the Giants to the playoffs, and then you think you’re getting a deal for everything you did and instead you get tagged.”
“There’s just been so much that’s been going on the last three or four years for me, negative and positive,” Barkley said later. “I take all those things and make all the negatives into a positive, that’s a mindset I have. All of those moments and all of that adversity has helped shape me.”
‘You just lit a fire’
After retreating indoors and into the coaches’ office that sits between the Zephyrs’ practice field and the home stadium, Barkley fished out a turf pebble from his eye while signing Nittany Lions jerseys and reflecting on everything that has happened since the last time he wore those colors.
Barkley quickly became a difference maker for the Giants, being named NFL offensive rookie of the year in 2018 while amassing 2,028 total yards from scrimmage and 15 touchdowns for an offense that ranked 31st in scoring the year before and 17th the following season with him in the backfield.
His pursuit of joining the ranks of the great running backs he has studied extensively since high school was slowed considerably by a torn right ACL suffered early in the 2020 season, the nadir for Barkley’s career to that point, and a high ankle sprain the following season that left him well below 100 percent the rest of the year.
Obviously, deals were sent to me, but it wasn’t anything that I agreed with. I think the guaranteed money could have been better.
Even once he regained his previous form in 2022, rushing for 1,312 yards and finishing third in the Associated Press’ comeback player of the year award voting, a drawn-out, unsuccessful contract negotiation last offseason led to Barkley’s signing a one-year deal to avoid playing on the franchise tag going into 2023.
“Obviously, deals were sent to me, but it wasn’t anything that I agreed with,” Barkley said regarding last year’s contract talks with the Giants. “I think the guaranteed money could have been better.”
The fruitless multiyear negotiation with the Giants led to Barkley’s eventual decision to sign a three-year, $37.75 million contract with $26 million guaranteed with the Eagles in March, making him the fourth-highest-paid player at his position in terms of average annual value.
» READ MORE: Eagles signing Saquon Barkley isn’t that far from Howie Roseman’s philosophy on running backs
While Barkley drew criticism from Giants fans for signing with a division rival, he later clarified that he never got a formal offer from the organization in the lead-up to free agency. That sentiment was seemingly further confirmed in a conversation shown on HBO’s Hard Knocks between Giants general manager Joe Schoen and Barkley before the start of free agency, when Schoen told Barkley to evaluate his market and asked that he give the Giants a chance to match any offer he received.
In the previous week’s episode, Schoen told several members of the Giants’ front office that the public scrutiny that followed the team’s lack of agreement with Barkley last year took “10 years off” his life and expressed doubt that the league would value Barkley highly enough to sign him or trade for him if the Giants used the franchise tag on him again.
Schoen also explained the Giants’ rationale for letting him walk, pointing to the investment the organization already made in quarterback Daniel Jones and pressing needs at other positions.
“You’re paying the guy $40 million,” Schoen said of Jones. “It’s not to hand the ball off to a $12 million back. My plan is to address the offensive line at some point here in free agency. ... This is the year for Dan.”
Speaking before Schoen’s comments were televised, Barkley acknowledged the existing skepticism about his value because of his position and the workload he took on with the Giants. He’s not the type to ignore negativity. Instead, he channels it.
“Anyone that tells you that you don’t get motivation from naysayers is lying,” Barkley said. “You see everything. Even if you block it out, you make stuff up in your head. The motivation comes from me wanting to be great, having a purpose, being passionate about the game and wanting to win championships and become a Hall of Fame player. Right now in my career, I’m far from that. But I feel like if I finish my second [half of] my career strong, I’m going to be able to put my name in that book.”
» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley fires back at Tiki Barber after former Giant says Barkley is ‘dead’ to him
George Makhoul, Barkley’s former Whitehall coach and mentor who now works on the board of the running back’s community development foundation, said Barkley has made a concerted effort to handle the contract dispute with the Giants carefully rather than airing things out in public.
“He could have said what was really going on behind the scenes, what was in the deals, and what wasn’t in the deals,” Makhoul said. “He kept the highest possible road of ethics and integrity with that. He could have easily burned those guys.
“Every time you tell him he can’t do something or something is not going to work out for him, you just lit a fire. Do these things get to him? Sure, he’s human. But he has a way to compartmentalize it.”
Calling B.S.
One day after officially signing with the Eagles, Barkley walked along the sidelines of Penn State’s indoor facility with his son, Saquon Jr., perched atop his shoulders.
Penn State’s pro day was a convenient enough excuse for Barkley to make a “homecoming” to Happy Valley, but he disappeared from the field for a workout of his own and his true homecoming commenced between the bars of a squat rack in the Nittany Lions’ weight room.
When questions pop up about his longevity — or the longevity of high-usage players at his position in general — Barkley’s impassioned rebuttal is rooted in habits like these, habits he formed by studying those who came before him and those who withstood the test of time.
“That’s [BS],” Barkley said. “Marcus Allen played until he was 36, 37 years old. Some of the greats that I admire and I look up and study, they played well into their 30s. Barry [Sanders] left at 29, 30 and he left in his prime. It’s what you put in, what you put in is what you get out. That’s any position. There’s this weird thing with running backs right now. Is it a difficult position to play? Yes. Do you take wear and tear? Yes. But who are you or anyone else to tell me how long I can play the game? I call [BS].”
“When it’s over for me, it’s over for me. But I feel like if I continue to put the right stuff in my body and do the right things, there will be a day when I’m 32 or 33 and I want to hang it up, and I’m going to do it just because.”
In recent years, Barkley has pushed for more injury-prevention measures in his offseason training regimen and compiled 288 total touches in 14 games last season partly thanks to a more diversified approach to workouts and dietary changes. He suffered an ankle injury midway through the season, something he said he now realizes is not completely preventable.
“I’ve been trying to control everything,” Barkley said. “Like, ‘I have to do this so I won’t get hurt.’ I can’t control that. My three or four injuries I’ve had in the NFL are flukes. There was nothing I could do to change them. But that’s what it is — everything I want to be and all the potential people talk about, when I’m on the field, I’m that and more.”
The second act
When Barkley makes a cut on the practice field, he sometimes thinks of Tiger Woods’ golf swing.
Dating back to his time at Penn State — where compete was his favorite core value — Barkley said he has always found use in studying great athletes from across different sports. It’s what’s behind the viral video of him feigning forehands and backhands while watching Serena Williams at the U.S. Open a few years ago and the reason he followed Woods during the PGA Championship in Louisville earlier this year.
So, going through the motions of a change-of-direction drill, the way Woods overemphasizes a movement in a practice swing to showcase the difference between “feel versus real,” is front of mind for the running back.
“In football, you do the same thing with cuts,” Barkley said. “When I train, I try to overexaggerate all the cuts. Am I ever going to get to that spot in a game? Probably not. But if I do, I’m prepared for it, and also that feel, whether it’s a cut or if I’m trying to juke somebody, I want to turn my head a little bit and apply little stuff, feel versus real, it all translates to the field. Especially when you play at higher speeds at a competitive level.”
Barkley’s admiration of figures like Woods, Williams, and Kobe Bryant also makes him a natural fit for the Eagles, with Nick Sirianni also having a set of core values that starts with compete and a history of showing clips of Woods and Bryant to the team during team meetings.
Everything I want is still there. Everything I wanted to accomplish, I can still go out there and do it. I just have to believe in myself and go to work.
With Barkley on the other side of the rivalry for the first six years of his career and playing against Sirianni the last three seasons, the running back’s opinion of the Eagles coach and his competitive streak has done an about-face since he signed with the team, and understandably so.
“Going against him the last couple years, you see it,” Barkley said. “From the outside looking in, you’re like, ‘Damn, I can’t stand that guy,’ but when you get to meet him, it all makes sense. It’s authentic. It’s who he is.”
» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley as NFL MVP? Maybe not. In the conversation? You bet, with or without the numbers.
Barkley’s on-field fit with the Eagles seems natural as well. The Giants last season finished 31st in ESPN’s run-block win rate metric, which measures how often an offensive front wins its matchups on a running play. By comparison, the Eagles finished first last season and second the year before.
The potential for the partnership is what helps justify the investment the Eagles made in Barkley, who said his pursuit of becoming one of the all-time greats at his position is still in reach for him as he embarks on his first season with the team.
“For me, it’s simple,” Barkley said. “When I’m on the field, I’m one of the best, if not the best. I just have to stay on the field. Knock on wood, it’s not injuries like a pulled hamstring or something like that, I tore my knee and I had two or three high ankle sprains that sat me out. ... Everything I want is still there. Everything I wanted to accomplish, I can still go out there and do it. I just have to believe in myself and go to work. If it doesn’t happen, it wasn’t in the cards, but every day I’m going to try to climb up that mountain and try to make it to the top.”