Did Saquon Barkley Give His Word to Giants About Free Agency?

The series trailer for Hard Knocks teased as to whether now former Giants running back Saquon Barkley welched on a promise to the New York Giants. Episode 2 of Hard Knocks answered that question.

iMar 14, 2024; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley gestures during a press conference after signing with the team. / Kyle Ross-USA TODAY Sports

Did Saquon Barkley renege on a promise to give the New York Giants a chance to match any contract offer he received in the free-agent market?

That burning question was answered during Tuesday night’s second installment of Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants, and (WARNING: Spoilers alert!) as it turns out, the answer is no.

Sort of.

The second episode dealt primarily with the pre-combine meetings and the combine itself, the Barkley segments coming later in the show. 

We learn that Giants general manager Joe Schoen is still conflicted over what to do with Barkley, whom he feels can still play the game, but who, according to a study the team did in the off-season, may be on the downside of his career.

Schoen, in trying to decide what to do with Barkley, openly admitted in a phone call with Ed Berry, Barkley’s agent at CAA, that he wasn’t sure of Barkley’s market value. 

While he believed Barkley was the Giants’ best player on offense last year and someone who could still help the team, Schoen concluded it would be in the best interest of all parties if Barkley were allowed to test the market, believing that if Barkley were sincere about his desire to be a “Giant for life,” he would leave the communication lines open.

As Schoen began to tell Berry what the data suggested about aging running backs and performance decline, Berry interrupted him and asked, “When you’re in your room at night alone, when you’re by yourself, are you like, ‘I wouldn’t mind if this kid bounced?’”

Schoen didn’t answer the question, but as he wrapped up the call with the agent, he said. “I’ll let the league determine (Barkley’s market value), and if you want to come back and be a Giant, then let’s try to find something that makes sense—if we’re close, then let’s have a conversation.”

After Schoen spoke with Berry, he called Barkley, and a snippet from that conversation appeared in the teaser. Schoen asked the running back for his word about giving the Giants a chance to match any offers.

With the conversation playing out in Episode 2, Barkley, at no point, never came right out and said, “I give you my word,” when Schoen asked him point blank about it.

Here’s how the conversation unfolded after Schoen told Barkley that the “right thing” was for him to test the market and that he didn’t want to go through the franchise tag thing again.

Schoen: If you really want to be a Giant for life, and you’re interested in staying here and coming back, see what your market is and then have Ed (Berry, his agent) come back to us, and we’ll see if we can come to an agreement.

Barkley: All right, I appreciate that.”

Schoen: Does that sound good?

Barkley: Yep.

Schoen: Can you give me your word on that, or are you not going to give us a chance?

Barkley: What do you mean? Like “circling back”?

Schoen: Yeah.

Barkley: I mean, I already told you where I want to be, so…

Schoen: Okay, so let’s do that.

It appears that Schoen may have thought Barkley agreed to give them a chance to match any offer he received on the market. However, after signing with the Eagles, Barkley revealed on his X account that the Giants never made him an offer this cycle to stay.

Perspectives

There will more than likely be additional clips of Barkley, perhaps as soon as in Episode 3 when free agency comes up next in the episode timeline when the Giants learn of his decision to leave, but there are a few things to take away from what was revealed in the second episode.

But here are some thoughts on why things may have broken down between the two sides.

First, if we go back to Schoen’s conversation with Berry, where Schoen said, “If we’re close, let’s have a conversation,” we can probably assume that with the Eagles having offered Barkley an APY that exceeded the franchise tag amount ($12+ million) and with the Giants unsure of his value to the point where they didn’t want to use the tag, Berry might have felt that there was no point in having a conversation.

Second, Barkley has often spoken about wanting to be respected. Perhaps in his mind, Shoen’s struggles to assign a value for Barkley’s services didn’t sit well with him. We might never know the answer to that question unless Barkley speaks of it, but such an assumption certainly wouldn’t be a stretch.

I noted this in my rundown of the first episode, and this second episode reinforced my belief that Schoen’s feathers might still have been ruffled after Barkley failed to accept the offers Schoen made to him during the 2023 off-season. Schoen seemed torn between wanting to appease Barkley and show him respect while not gouging him prices.

It’s probably fair to say that Schoen’s passive approach toward Barkley’s value this off-season may have cost the Giants their best offensive player. Whether the decision comes back to bite them remains to be seen, but the whole saga explains why letting the market set a player’s value is generally not a good idea.

As we saw in the first episode, Chris Rosetti, the Giants’ director of pro scouting, foreshadowed what could happen when he said that a team with money to burn could come along and make Barkley an offer he couldn’t refuse. 

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