Super Bowl 2025: Saquon Barkley and Dave Gettleman will always be on same team

NEW ORLEANS — Saquon Barkley and Dave Gettleman are no longer Giants, but the two are tied together in the team’s recent history and have remained in close contact despite their divergent paths.

“Yes, we continue to talk, text, especially a little more this year than we have in the past,” Barkley said on Wednesday of the former Giants general manager who picked him second overall in the 2018 NFL Draft. “I’ll always have love for him. He is the guy who gave me an opportunity and drafted me to New York. Unfortunately, things didn’t go the way that we would have liked, but one of my goals was to be able to make everyone proud and hopefully I’m making him proud right now.”

Barkley left the Giants last March in near silence. No offer, no struggle. A year and a half of negotiations that always felt far apart until ultimately, as we saw on “Hard Knocks,” a quick, sober phone call from general manager Joe Schoen, who had replaced Gettleman, ended the relationship.

It was far different from how he arrived in New York. That was with Gettleman trumpeting Barkley’s talents about as loud as Dizzy Gillespie.

He called Barkley a “Gold Jacket” pick, said he was “touched by the hand of God,” and said he was “the unanimous best player in the draft.”

Seven seasons later, Barkley is certainly justifying Gettleman’s takes — albeit in his first year with the Eagles and not the Giants — by being one game away from capping the most productive season by a running back in NFL history with a Super Bowl title on Sunday.

“I don’t think it hurt me,” Barkley said of having such lofty expectations placed upon him. “I think it helped instill confidence in me. I think he was alluding to what I believed in and what I already knew. I don’t think it was a crazy statement for him to say. If you go back and watch my film in college and watch the things I was able to do, I don’t know how a lot of people weren’t able to see that.”

Barkley seemed poised to fulfill those lofty prophecies after he ran for 1,307 yards and won Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2018, but his stats slipped the following season and then injuries began to take a toll on him, including a torn ACL and a number of ankle sprains. Barkley did lead the Giants to the playoffs in 2022, but after that season Schoen decided to invest long-term in quarterback Daniel Jones (another of Gettleman’s picks) rather than Barkley.

For a number of reasons ranging from coaching to offensive line play, Barkley was unable to be what Gettleman foresaw while they were both with the Giants.

“Unfortunately life doesn’t work like that,” Barkley said. “Just because you are blessed with God-given ability and you work super hard it’s not going to just be a straight road.”

Gettleman retired after the 2021 season. Although many of his moves did not work out for the Giants, several managed to become solid Pro Bowl players, including the selections of Andrew Thomas and Dexter Lawrence.

Barkley, though, remains his greatest hit.

“I’ve always been super thankful to him,” Barkley said.

On Sunday, he’ll have a chance to make it even more super.

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.