Saquon Barkley returns to his place among NFL marquee running backs

Of all the numbers Saquon Barkley accumulated on Sunday which led to his being named NFC Offensive Player of the Week, the one he is most proud of seems to be 21.11 -- as in miles per hour. 

That’s the speed he reached during his 68-yard run against the Titans, according to the NFL’s NextGen Stats.

“The Giants clocked me at 20.29,” he said Wednesday, looking at the board in the locker room that lists such accomplishments. “I have to talk to (Ty Siam, the team’s director of football data and innovation) about that one. They shorted me a little bit.”

The somewhat official 21.11 made him the second-fastest ballcarrier in the NFL in Week 1 and it was the fastest he has moved since before he tore his ACL early in 2020. He has only gone faster three times prior to that in his career.

“It felt good,” he said. “The only thing I think about that play is I need to find a way to score.”

He did so three snaps later on a hard, shoulder-pads-down, 4-yard run.

Barkley has always been able to do both of those things, run with radar gun-popping speed and bone-jarring power. That he was ALLOWED to do it Sunday is perhaps the surest sign that he has returned to his place among the marquee running backs in the NFL.

While other backs who are returning from injuries in 2021 are being eased into this season with limits either concrete or abstract – the Titans on Sunday were careful not to overuse Derrick Henry and the Panthers, this week’s Giants opponent, have so far curtailed their use of Christian McCaffrey -- Barkley currently has no limitations . No pitch counts, no worries about his number of touches, nothing like that.

Barkley is back without caveat or concern.

“He’s been healthy, he’s been fully cleared, and he’s been out here,” coach Brian Daboll said of Barkley’s potentially unlimited availability. “Obviously we took some stuff off of him in the preseason with the hits that he’ll probably accrue here (in the regular season). I think we’ll constantly evaluate that with the medical staff and the strength staff if we need to do something different. But at this point, Week 2, he’s fresh, he’s healthy.”

And so he’ll be on the field. A lot.

“I’m just thankful,” Barkley said of the lack of limitations. “This league is tough, not just on running backs, but any position in the NFL. You are going against grown men who have to feed their family coming at you at 20 miles per hour and hitting you. It’s a crazy game. For me, I’ve been out so many games these past two games that every day I walk in the building I’m just thankful.”

Barkley won’t play every snap in every game. No running back does. But if he keeps playing the way he did Sunday, the Giants will want him out there as much as possible.

Daboll said he never has a plan for how many touches anyone should get, whether as a limitation or a goal.

“I don’t go into the game saying, ‘Hey, let’s get him 50 plays’ or ‘Let’s get him 20 touches,’” Daboll said. “I think that’s an adjustment part of the game. Obviously (Barkley) is a very good player. You want him to touch the ball. But it’s about how he’s feeling, how you’re communicating on the sideline. Does he say ‘Hey, I need a series here,’ or ‘I need two’? We just talk about it that way. It’s not, ‘We’re just going to give him this.’”

Not every player and team with a big name running back functions that way. Only the lucky ones do.

Now, for the first time since 2018, the Giants are among that group.

Barkley said he wants to keep it going that way.

“I’ve just been trying the best I can do to take care of my body,” he said. “I put a lot of money into my body. Hopefully it pays off.”

He hasn’t gone through a season without missing time since his rookie campaign. Maybe the next big number for him to be happy about isn’t a speed or a yard distance but 17 as in regular season games played.

But why hold him back there? The Giants aren’t. If he keeps playing the way he did Sunday, perhaps there will be more to appear in after those.

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.