Giants don't expect Saquon Barkley at voluntary OTAs with contract dispute lingering

Saquon Barkley currently is training in Arizona, as he has done in previous offseasons.

In the past week, he retweeted a couple of photographs. One was from a fan who captioned: “I miss this moment,” referring to a Barkley touchdown against the Packers. The other? Of Barkley training alongside wide receivers DeAndre Hopkins and Odell Beckham Jr.

That’s the easy part of this story. The harder part: Everything else.

The Brian Daboll/Joe Schoen brain trust did not draft Barkley, of course. In the same 2018 draft in which the Giants selected Barkley second overall, general manager Brandon Beane and the Bills — then the employer of Daboll and Schoen — moved up to take Josh Allen as the No. 7 pick.

Back then, there were whispers that the Bills had concerns about the long-term effects of Barkley’s workload at Penn State. They also were starved for a franchise quarterback, and they clearly made the right choice.

These days, the issues with Barkley and the Giants are about dollars and cents. On May 13, Barkley’s agent, Kim Miale, refuted a recent report that her client seeks $16 million a year. “That is not true,” she tweeted.

Given the franchise tag of $10.1 million guaranteed, Barkley represents the NFL’s bargain of all bargains in what has become a long-running saga (too long, you could argue).

At last season’s bye week, the two sides couldn’t agree on an extension. This year, after Barkley’s camp turned down an offer believed to have an average annual value of $12.5 million, the Giants placed the franchise tag on Barkley and Schoen took the contract offer off the table.

Business is business.

It’s fair to wonder, to what end? The Giants do not expect Barkley for the upcoming OTAs, which are voluntary.

Barkley rushed for 1,312 yards last season, fourth-best in the league. His 1,650 yards from scrimmage in 2022 represented 29% of his team’s total yards. No Giant had more than his 57 receptions.

Can you blame a contract-minded Barkley if he is thinking, if not now, when? Especially after seeing quarterback Daniel Jones and defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence get big deals?

When he spoke on a Zoom call in April, Jones said of Barkley, “He’s a great teammate and a great friend. I’ll support him through it all.”

Said Lawrence after signing his new deal: “I think Saquon is going to get what he deserves. He’s a great player, he’s a great leader for us. One of the top players on the team. I’m excited to see what’s [next for] him.”

Yes, the running back market has cratered, but it’s fair to note that Barkley is not “just” a running back (Giants owner John Mara has said as much). Barkley is the Giants’ superstar, often their locker room spokesman and almost always their compass. That comes naturally to him. Maybe it always has.

When he was a high school senior in Whitehall, Pennsylvania, Barkley won the 100-meter finals of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference track and field championships. Later in the meet, he was watching as a sophomore hurdler from another school district seemingly won a race but was stripped of her gold medal because the clock malfunctioned. On the rerun, she clipped a hurdle and finished eighth. Enter Barkley, who gave her his medal.

“It’s really hard to explain,” Barkley said back then, “but something inside of me told me it’d be the right thing to do to give her my medal. Honestly, I love winning races and receiving medals, but I felt she deserved it, too. Everyone saw that girl win her race.”

These days, Barkley and the Giants continue to navigate a far different kind of hurdle. One with much higher stakes that could shape this Giants season.

By Kimberly Jones

kimberly.jones@newsday.comkimjonessports

Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.