Saquon Barkley agrees to three-year, $37.5M deal with Eagles

Saquon Barkley, as it turns out, can go home again.

Barkley, a free agent, agreed to terms with the Eagles on Monday. Barkley himself confirmed the deal, posting a pair of eagles — the birds, not the players — on the social media site X at 2:42 p.m. Monday.

Ultimately, it came down to this: The Eagles wanted Barkley more than the Giants did.

Barkley agreed to a three-year deal with the Eagles worth $37.75 million, with $26 million guaranteed at signing. Twenty-six is Barkley’s jersey number. The total contract has a ceiling of $46.75 million.

“Thank you to everyone who has shown me love and support over the past 6 years . . . forever grateful! Excited for the next chapter,” Barkley, who spent six seasons with the Giants, posted on X, including a blue heart and a peace sign emoji.

As an Eagle, Barkley will face the Giants at least twice a year.

The Giants have a new running back, too: Devin Singletary. They agreed to terms with him on a three-year deal worth $16.5 million.

Singletary ran for 898 yards and four touchdowns with the Texans last season after spending the first four years of his career with the Bills, so he’s familiar with Giants general manager Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll from their Buffalo days.

Toward the end of the season, Barkley publicly asked the Giants to “shoot it to me straight” in terms of negotiating and in his standing with the team.

Asked at the recent NFL Combine about how Barkley’s value has changed since last year, Schoen said it had not.

“I wouldn’t say his value has changed, especially in the organization,” Schoen said. “He’s a captain, he’s a leader, he’s a hard worker. I think the world of Saquon, and I still think he can play.”

Now the Giants’ most popular player and best ambassador not only is gone but has joined a division rival.

Barkley grew up in Pennsylvania, about 65 miles from Philadelphia, and graduated from Penn State.

Barkley now will play behind the best offensive line of his career, even with the retirement of longtime center Jason Kelce.

At the Combine, Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni said this about the Eagles’ running game: “We were in the top 10 in rushing, and that’s been kind of a staple here the last three years, and we’ve done it with different pieces. You always can do it with different pieces. You never know how that plays out and what players you have in place. You know, I know what we’re looking for as far as that position and the roles that we want to fill with that position.”

When he said those words, Sirianni surely knew that he and the Eagles were going to make a run at signing Barkley as long as he reached free agency.

The Giants will be starkly different on the field without Barkley, who ran for 962 yards and six touchdowns last season. The No. 2 overall pick in 2018, he is fourth on the Giants’ career rushing list with 5,211 yards.

The franchise also will miss him as a presence in the locker room. Especially during this past season, when Daniel Jones was seriously injured twice, Barkley was not only a captain and leader but sometimes one of several players available to the media in the locker room. Barkley took that responsibility seriously.

When rookie Tommy DeVito was thrust into the starting quarterback role, it was Barkley who was his biggest supporter, especially when touting him to the media. That Barkley gave DeVito the seal of approval mattered to his teammates.

Seemingly at every turn, Barkley put the team above himself. If he tired of the responsibility he bore, he did not often show it.

But if Barkley longed for a chance to make regular trips to the postseason, that would be understandable. With the Giants, he made the playoffs only once.

Notwithstanding the money — and the Giants never would have matched the Eagles’ offer — it is the opportunity to win that ultimately might mean the most to Barkley. He watched as his buddy, Odell Beckham Jr., was traded away. Barkley saw how his close friend Sterling Shepard weathered injury after injury and always came back.

Now Barkley is gone, too. He received no final ovation from the home crowd. He didn’t have the chance to say goodbye. Perhaps in Philadelphia, of all places, his football dreams will come true.

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.