Did Bruised Feelings Affect Giants GM Joe Schoen’s Handling of Saquon Barkley Situation?

The NFL is a business run by humans with emotions and feelings. And it's certainly fair to wonder if sometimes feelings cloud judgements behind key decisions.

The New York Giants' running back Saquon Barkley (26) is shown with the ball against the Jets. The Giants' star running back is on the verge of hitting free agency and there is plenty of debate over his uncertain future with Big Blue. / Kevin R. Wexler - The Record / USA TODAY

Anyone involved in the NFL knows that, ultimately, decisions that get made and those that don’t are all about doing what’s in the best interest of the affected parties.

But these are humans involved in making these decisions–humans with feelings. And despite the mantra of “it's a business,” feelings get bruised when a scenario doesn’t quite work out as hoped.

This brings us to the New York Giants-Saquon Barkley off-season “drama,” which ended with the running back doing what was in his best interest and signing with the Philadelphia Eagles on a three-year, $37 million contract that the Giants apparently had no desire to match–more on that in a moment.

In the series premiere of Hard Knocks that stars the Giants in the first-ever off-season iteration of the program, we get a carefully edited glance into the discussions between team officials as Schoen grappled with the decision on what to do with Barkley, arguably their best player on offense since he was drafted second overall in 2018. 

While the first episode shed some light on the organization’s thinking, it also raised another question that probably won’t be answered in the series: Did the failed contract negotiations with Barkley before the start of the 2023 training camp affect Schoen’s perception of his value?

At points in the premiere episode, Schoen appeared to be still smarting from the failed contract negotiations with Barkley during the 2023 off-season, which ultimately resulted in the running back signing a modified one-year franchise tag. 

During the episode, Schoen quipped about how that negotiation took ten years off his life. At another point, during a conversation with former NFL running back turned scout Frank Gore–the very same Frank Gore about whom Schoen said, “When he talks running backs, you listen”—Schoen spoke about the mileage Barkley racked up at Penn State and with the Giants.

The scene almost seemed as though Schoen was trying to convince himself that the running back was not worth a second franchise tag, despite Gore’s opinion of Barkley being very talented.

Yet in another clip between Schoen and team officials, Schoen’s voice seemed to have just a tinge of bitterness when he spoke about Barkley’s desire to be respected, making the quotation signs with his hands. 

In the end, Schoen revealed on camera that he felt the right thing to do was to let Barkley test the market, despite some mild pushback from Giants director of pro personnel Chris Rosetti, director of player personnel Tim McDonnell, and team COO John Mara. Schoen’s hope, as he relayed on screen, was that Barkey would give the Giants a chance to match any offer he received on the market.

The Giants took a passive approach in deciding to let Barkley hit the market, find out his value, and then give them a chance to match, which, perhaps in Barkley’s eyes, made him feel disrespected even more. 

Perhaps Schoen was still clinging to the offers he made Barkley during the failed 2023 negotiations and was hopeful of being able to dust them off again this off-season if no market materialized for Barkley.

That’s the part we might never get the answer to, but what we can conclude is that if the Giants really wanted Barkley back, they should have been more proactive in putting an offer out there for him to consider, one that he could have weighed against what the market offered.

They didn’t, as Schoen counted on a saturated veteran running back market to squash Barkley’s potential value around the league in what could have been viewed as the ultimate sign of disrespect by the running back. 

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