Saquon Barkley has Giant expectations of himself

Saquon Barkley may never be good enough to satisfy Saquon Barkley.

Super Bowls, MVPs, rushing titles, franchise records, and whatever else he might be able to pick up along the way in his career will be nice, sure, but the level Barkley is striving for is beyond even those potential accolades and achievements. So far beyond, in fact, that it’ll be impossible for him to grasp.

“I will never be there,” he said on Thursday. “I’m going to be completely honest with you. I keep saying I’m going to work for it and work for it, but the way I view myself and the confidence I have in myself, the goal for me to be elite is so high that I don’t think I will ever honestly reach it.”

But he’ll try. It’s why after two successful seasons in the NFL that have placed him firmly among the league’s top active running backs, this third tour is starting to feel like one that may bring him to an all-time height. With a new coaching staff that is pushing him harder than he has ever been pushed before, and a new scheme that focuses on getting the football to him in more ways than before, 2020 could be the year that Barkley starts to match up with some of the greatest to ever play the game.

Saquon is about to be unleashed.

For that to happen, he knows he has to be a “complete” back. His favorite player of all time has always been Barry Sanders, but his new role model in regard to a well-rounded game is Walter Payton.

“When you think of Walter Payton, you see clips or highlights of him in between tackles, outside tackles, catching, blocking,” Barkley said. “There are even times he’s throwing the ball. I’m not saying I can throw the ball as far as Walter Payton. I’m not hitting a trick play coming up. But those are things. I don’t want to be just a special interior running back. I don’t want to be just a special outside the box running back, catch the ball here and there. I truly believe that with my God-given ability and the work that I put in that I can be special in all phases.”

It's why, in practices this training camp, Barkley spent just as much time pounding the sled to work on his blitz pickups as he did on his footwork with the football in his hands. It’s why he said this training camp — the shortest of his career — was the hardest he’s ever been through.

Asked what gives him confidence he can be more productive than ever, Barkley didn’t hesitate.

“My coaches,” he said. “I would say no disrespect to any coaches I’ve had in the past. Right now, the coaches, with Coach [Burton] Burns and Stephen [Brown], they just bring two different dimensions in the way that they’ve been challenging me.”

Add Joe Judge to that list, too. Barkley is the only player close to being a bona fide superstar on the team, and yet the rookie coach has not been averse to chewing him out and demanding more from him on the practice fields.

“At the end of the day, it’s about winning games,” Barkley said. “If I can do that by helping my team in the pass game, then that’s the case. If that’s by helping them in the run game, then that’s the case. We might throw the ball 40 times a game and I might have to be responsible for key blocks, then that’s what I have to do. It’s not just focusing on just me being elite. It’s whatever it takes to help the team win.”

The chase for elite, though, is always somewhere in Barkley’s mind.

“If I come anywhere near close to it, I’ll know that I put the work in every single day,” he said. “I personally can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day and know whenever I am done with this and wrapped it up that I put everything I had into it. Whatever that is, if it’s awards, if it’s Super Bowls, if it’s not, I’ll know for myself internally the work that I put in.

“I can be satisfied with that one day.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.