After the Giants and Saquon Barkley spent the past eight months in sporadic extension talks, the Pro Bowl running back will be forced to play this season on a $10.1MM franchise tag. Barkley joins Josh Jacobs and Tony Pollard in this boat during a turbulent stretch for the running back position.
The Giants and Barkley came within approximately $2MM — both in AAV and guarantees — of hammering out a deal. As RB value dropped this offseason, Barkley and Jacobs are not expected to report to their respective training camps. Barkley has now referenced the prospect of sitting out regular-season games on multiple occasions.
During a podcast appearance days before the Monday’s tag deadline, the Giants back outlined his thought process regarding his absence lasting into the regular season.
“I have no worry about going on a football field and knowing that I’m not playing for my worth or saying if I have to play, because this is my leverage: my leverage is I could say f*** you to the Giants,” Barkley said during an appearance on The Money Matters Podcast with Jack Mallers (via the New York Daily News’ Pat Leonard). “I could say f*** you to my teammates and be like, ‘You want me to show you my worth? You want me to show how valuable I am to the team? I won’t show up. I won’t play a down. And that’s a play I can use.
“Anybody [who] knows me knows that’s not something I want to do. But is that something that’s crossed my mind? I never thought I would ever do that, but now I’m at a point where it’s like ‘Jesus, like, I might have to take it to this level.’ Am I willing and prepared to take it to the level? I don’t know.”
None of Barkley’s options at this point include money beyond 2023. He has not signed the $10.1MM franchise tender, allowing for a camp no-show without a fine. He addressed the subject of a Le’Veon Bell-like move earlier this summer, and a recent report reintroduced the prospect of skipping at least Week 1. Barkley would lose out on $561K for each game missed, but seeing as the former No. 2 overall pick resides in a different NFL tax bracket compared to Jacobs or Pollard due to banking $38MM-plus from 2018-22, missing games to punish the Giants and remove the risk of injury and wear and tear is more realistic in this case.
“[Missing games is] something I gotta sit down and talk to my family [about],” Barkley said. “I gotta sit down and talk to my team, gotta really strategize about this. I can’t just go off of emotions … But I am at a place where if I do go on the field and have to play and prove again, I’m fine with that.”
The only upside of a Barkley in-season absence would be limiting mileage and better positioning himself for a free agency bid in 2024. Barkley logged 352 touches in 2018 and 2022, and injury- and talent-based questions about the Giants’ receiving corps positions the sixth-year running back as a cornerstone player in 2023 as well. While Bell took considerable heat for passing on a $14.5MM franchise tag in 2018, the Jets gave him a four-year, $52.5MM deal ($27MM guaranteed) in 2019. The current RB market does not suggest a windfall would await Barkley next year, and the Giants could tag him again at barely $12MM. But the Penn State product is running out of time to score a lucrative veteran contract.
Barkley, 26, can also attempt to use the threat of missed games to entice the Giants to add a clause that prohibits a second tag in 2024. This staring contest may last a bit, with Sportskeeda’s Tony Pauline adding Barkley feels disrespected and will be ready to stay away from his team for a “significant” time period.
Barkley assessed the contract negotiations — at least those that occurred before last weekend — and indicated a conversation with John Mara prompted him to intervene during the sides’ winter talks. But after the Giants franchise-tagged Barkley, they pulled a contract offer. The sides’ talks before this week’s deadline brought the guarantee total toward $22MM but dropped the AAV below $12MM. Although the Mara talks did not produce a deal, Pauline adds second-year GM Joe Schoen communicated to Barkley and Daniel Jones of a likelihood of the player not extended in March would have a real chance of playing on the tag. The Giants made Jones their top offseason priority and extended him (four years, $160MM) minutes before the March deadline to tag players.
“That was the only time I really got involved in the negotiation process,” Barkley said. “I sat down with the owner. The owner told me what it was, told me how they care about me. And this is when we were still going tit for tat [with offers] … The owner opened up to me, and I respected that.
“’I let you [Mara] know how much I feel about this place, how much I feel about your family, … how much I feel about [Steve] Tisch’s family.’ That’s when I picked up the phone and I called my agent and I was like, ‘I don’t care; let’s get it done. Like boom, this is where I want to be, this is the number I’m fine with, boom, let’s get there.’ … When you get tagged, now they have the tag, now it’s like, ‘You know what Saquon? If we really want to, we don’t have to offer you anything.'”
Previously accusing the Giants of providing dishonest information about his contract desires via leaks, Barkley also accused the team of comparing him to backs with inferior receiving skillsets. To be fair, the Giants have not used Barkley’s receiving chops too much since Pat Shurmur‘s exit; his last 400-plus-yard aerial season came in 2019.
“I’m not even asking for what I’m worth,” Barkley said of his goal before the deadline. “Because I just told you I’m the best running back in the NFL. But I’m not going to war for that. In the negotiation process, I’m not going to war for that.
“For me, I was like, you know what, I can go there, I can go to war, try to get as much money as I can, but at the end of the day, what really matters is winning, and winning a championship. And I know if I’m able to help bring a championship to New York, that’s going to go miles more ahead than this contract.”
Due to tag rules, Barkley contract talks cannot commence again until January 2024. The New Jersey native’s comments just before the tag deadline indicated he wanted to stay with the Giants for the rest of his career. It will be interesting to see how this saga plays out now that the extension talks have ceased.
Considering he missed roughly 25% of his teams games in his first 5 seasons and basically got paid to rehab 25% of the time, maybe he should’ve taken a 25% discount on his perceived value and signed the deal.
While that may be true, there is no way on earth the Giants would’ve made the playoffs last year without him. And if he sits out this season there is no retread that’ll get em there this year either.
I agree with you… But when the Giants still being in a rebuild and in need of high draft picks, as exciting as it was for then to make the playoffs and win a game, I believe they would have been better off in the long run by losing a few more games.
He declined a $13m a year deal only to be tagged for $10m and won’t sign that either???? Ok.
@arty, the NFLPA is really to be blamed. They never fought hard enough for guaranteed contracts. While I understand contracts for 53 players is tougher than say +-30 for MLB. The guaranteed value of the contract would eliminate a lot of this crap that goes on.
Barkley has no leverage and everyone knows it. There isn’t any team hanging out with a 15m a year offer. If he sits out both him and the Giants lose. Quite frankly he aint as good as Leveon Bell and the Giants aren’t contenders like the steelers were.
Bell was a product of the zone blocking scheme used in Pittaa. He did nothing of value for the Jets.
The market dictates price and RB ain’t it
The Giants going all out on Daniel Jones and overpaying StickMan $40 million/year, leaving nothing in the till for Barkley – it’s understandable he feels the way he does. Looks like it’s tag and trade time. Someone somewhere will guarantee Barkley $25 million for the next two years of his play.
Problem for him is he isn’t the beck back in the league. Everyone knows that. On any other team he loses value, as almost no other team has a lack of skill players like the Giants have. The team has all the leverage and they know it. He is getting nowhere near the touches anywhere else (assuming he stays healthy. Big if), and no team is going to pay a 26 year old, injury prone back as if he’s the best in the league.
Well without Barkley, it’s sink or swim for the Giants and mostly sink. Even feuding with Barkley will poison the season. Time to trade Barkley for whatever they can get to someone who wants to pay him.
I just saw that Barkley and the Giants just agreed to a one-year deal that was based around the franchise tag, but I didn’t think there was room for any negotiation once the deadline passed. I guess you can include signing bonuses and incentives as long as you don’t go past the year or alter the base value of the tag.